Every category where a model named Zscaler Deception 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%	31 of 94	33%	12	criticized challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Zscaler Deception 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 Zscaler Deception 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	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	1	2	0	3
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	1	1
Mistral Small	0	0	1	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	1	0	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	1	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0
GPT-6 Luna	2	0	1	3
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

Direct7 labelsNone

Paraphrase6 labels2

Comparative8 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained4 labels1

Scale-constrained2 labelsNone

Negative13 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative40 labels in all, every segment counted; 3 of the 4 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.

“You already use Zscaler and want deception closely integrated with its Zero Trust platform.” GPT-6 Luna · Deception · direct prompt · alternative

“Companies already using Zscaler | Integrated with existing Zscaler infrastructure” Kimi K2 · Deception · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“Already standardized on Zscaler? Start with Zscaler Deception” GPT-6 Luna · Deception · comparative prompt · alternative

“Zscaler Deception (good for cloud-heavy environments)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Deception · scale 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.

“one listed dislike says endpoint decoys created unnecessary network noise. That's a reason to test the feature in your own network—not, by itself, a reason to reject the product.” GPT-6 Luna · Deception · negative prompt · soft negative

“platforms like SentinelOne, Zscaler, and Fortinet may include deception as a light feature, but they are not designed primarily for deception” Mistral Small · Deception · negative prompt · soft negative

“These outperform "deception features" in XDR (e.g., SentinelOne's own lite version, Zscaler)” Grok 4.1 Fast · Deception · comparative prompt · soft negative

“Overkill and likely over budget” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Deception · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Zscaler Deception, over the 40 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Zscaler Deception was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Acalvio ShadowPlex30 of 4017Not among the top eight

Thinkst Canary24 of 405Not among the top eight

SentinelOne Singularity17 of 402Not among the top eight

CounterCraft14 of 402Not among the top eight

Fidelis Deception10 of 400Not among the top eight

FortiDeceptor10 of 400Not among the top eight

Proofpoint Shadow9 of 400Not among the top eight

Fortinet FortiDeceptor7 of 400Not among the top eight

Illusive Networks7 of 400Not among the top eight

Tracebit6 of 402Not 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 Zscaler Deception. 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 40 of the 40 answers that named Zscaler Deception and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

acalvio.com26

expertinsights.com25

guideflow.com21

linkedin.com17

zscaler.comYour site13

dataintelo.com11

csoonline.com10

countercraftsec.com9

g2.com9

gartner.com9

137 of the 150 domain citations in answers naming Zscaler Deception came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/network-security/best-deception-technology-companies25

guideflow.com/blog/deception-technology-software21

linkedin.com/pulse/cyber-deception-technology-cisos-guide-choosing-right-anand-akela-zbmlc17

acalvio.com/preemptive-security/competitive-intelligence-cyber-deception16

acalvio.com/agentic-ai-security/deception-technology-solutions-an-enterprise-buyers-framew12

guptadeepak.com/tools/top-5-honeypots-deception-tools-20269

csoonline.com/article/570063/5-top-deception-tools-and-how-they-ensnare-attackers.html8

zscaler.com/products-and-solutions/deception-technology8

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Zscaler Deception 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: 210 a month (“zscaler deception”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 2 a month
Its own site: It sits on Zscaler's site (zscaler.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 31 of 94 in deception

Segment leader

37%

Thinkst Canary

First choices: 3 across its categories
Named in: 40 answers
Its own site cited: in 40 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 Zscaler Deception

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

Zscaler 4Zscaler/Smokescreen 1

Follow Zscaler Deception

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

Zscaler is the company behind Zscaler Deception.

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On record

Company records

Also from Zscaler: Zscaler, Zscaler Advanced SSPM, Zscaler DNS Security, Zscaler DSPM, Zscaler Internet Access, Zscaler Posture, Zscaler Posture Control, Zscaler Private Access and 7 more

In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: Allows you to configure and deploy decoys to disrupt active attacks, create fake attack paths, and gain high-fidelity threat intelligence.
help.zscaler.com/deception/about-deceive
For: security teams
help.zscaler.com/deception/about-investigate
Not stated on the pages read: Price, starting price, free plan or trial, integrations, certifications, hosting, customers

What Zscaler Deception's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: help.zscaler.com/deception/testing-rule, help.zscaler.com/deception/about-deceive, help.zscaler.com/deception/about-policies, help.zscaler.com/deception/about-orchestrate, help.zscaler.com/deception/about-investigate. 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 Zscaler Deception'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 Zscaler Deception, 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 Zscaler Deception by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Zscaler Deception 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 Zscaler Deception, 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.