Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud API Security vs Tracee

Palo Alto Networks Cortex Cloud API Security discovers, ranks, and protects APIs across cloud environments. It can find and validate APIs across gateways, workloads, and cloud environments, including shadow, zombie, and unmanaged APIs. Configuration and traffic context inform risk rankings based on severity and potential business impact. Risk insights cover internet exposure, sensitive data transmission, weak authentication, missing encryption, and specification drift. The product describes real-time protection against OWASP API Top 10 threats, including injection, authentication bypass, and data exposure; teams can use monitor or blocking modes. Agentless integrations are listed for AWS API Gateway, Azure APIM, GCP Apigee, and Kong. Linux workload protection uses an agent and is marked Beta. Teams can import OpenAPI specifications to check live traffic for deviations and scan for misconfigurations or vulnerabilities. Azure APIM integration requires the Data Collection add-on and a running Azure APIM service. Cortex CLI scans require an OpenAPI file and Java 11 or later, while Web and API Security requires the Runtime Security add-on. Pricing is on request; the product page offers a demo request.

Tracee is a free, open-source runtime security and observability tool for Linux. Using eBPF, it watches system calls, network activity, and file operations in real time, then emits events for behavior patterns that may indicate threats. Events can include process lineage, file paths, and network connections. Listed uses include security monitoring, compliance monitoring, troubleshooting, and forensic investigation. Tracee is designed to operate without code changes and lists low overhead, container awareness, and adjustable policies. Deployment options are an executable binary, a Docker Hub image, or a Helm chart in Aqua Security’s registry; the quickstart covers Kubernetes installation with that chart. Prometheus scraping is enabled by default, with metrics at :3366/metrics. It supports x86 and arm64 processors and documents long-term kernel versions 5.4, 5.10, 5.15, 6.2, and 6.5, while some distribution kernels may work. Instrumentation needs elevated capabilities, with privileged or root execution described as easiest. Tracee does not run directly on macOS.