Picus Security Platform vs PurpleSharp

Picus Security Platform helps security teams validate attack surfaces, exposures, and security controls to prioritize risks and remediation. It simulates attacks against controls such as EDR, SIEM, firewalls, WAFs, and email gateways, then supports remediation and retesting. The platform combines automated penetration testing, breach and attack simulation, and exposure validation. Its threat library contains more than 30,000 TTPs and thousands of scenarios; critical new simulations are added under a 24-hour SLA. AI Threat Builder converts inputs such as a blog URL, PDF, CVE ID, or threat actor name into an ATT&CK-mapped simulation. Picus says it integrates with more than 75 security technologies. Deployment options include SaaS, on-premises, and fully air-gapped environments, with yearly subscriptions and unlimited simulations. Pricing is available on request, and a 14-day free trial is listed. The trial includes one simulation agent, a ransomware-only library, and recommendations for one technology. After the trial, recurring simulations stop and simulation results are no longer accessible.

PurpleSharp is a free, open-source C# adversary simulation tool for Windows Active Directory environments. It generates attack telemetry for detection teams building and testing analytics, checking detection resilience, locating visibility gaps, and identifying event-logging pipeline problems. Documentation maps 47 MITRE ATT&CK techniques across execution, persistence, privilege escalation, credential access, lateral movement, discovery, and defense evasion. JSON playbooks can combine techniques, define variations, and set technique-specific parameters. Local simulations run interactively after copying the PurpleSharp assembly to a host. Remote simulations use Windows SMB and RPC, requiring administrative credentials on the target plus network access to TCP ports 445 and 135. Scout tasks retrieve audit policy, event subscriptions, PowerShell logging settings, processes, and services. ATT&CK Navigator layers can be exported or imported as JSON playbooks. PurpleSharp is self-hosted on Windows, requires .NET Framework 4.5, and is licensed under BSD 3-Clause. The latest documented release is v1.3 from August 2021.