Horizon3.ai vs Picus Security

About Picus Security

Picus Security sells a platform that proves what attackers can exploit and what defenses stop. Picus Security says it enables security teams to continuously validate and enhance organizations' cyber resilience. Autonomous Penetration Testing is one part of the Picus Platform. The capabilities of the Picus Platform converge into one continuous validation loop, from attack surface to controls to exploitable exposures.^{[3][6][10][12]}

Picus runs autonomous agents that chain real attacks across the full environment to show which exposures are genuinely exploitable. Autonomous Penetration Testing continuously enumerates external assets, internal networks, identities, and misconfigurations across the environment. Autonomous Penetration Testing can run fully autonomous, fully supervised, or anywhere in between. Every action and decision in Autonomous Penetration Testing is logged end to end. Autonomous Penetration Testing prioritizes exposures by validated risk and blast radius, then verifies the fix.

Exposure Validation proves exploitability without firing an exploit, covering restricted assets that no live test can touch and CVEs with no public or safe exploit. Picus Exposure Validation prioritizes exposures based on exploitability, security control performance, and asset criticality. Breach and Attack Simulation continuously tests what EDR, SIEM, firewall, WAF, and other security controls block and detect against the newest attacker techniques. Picus Breach and Attack Simulation evaluates whether defenses block or detect attacks, including attempted data exfiltration. The Picus Platform supplies vendor-specific prevention signatures and detection rules to optimize tools that fail to provide the protection required. Prevention signatures and detection rules from the Picus Mitigation Library are applied, then retested to confirm that the identified security gaps have been closed.^[6][11][12]

The Picus Platform simulates real-world threats and analyzes the security logs captured by a SIEM. Picus Detection Analytics identifies which attacks trigger alerts, which are missed, and where visibility gaps exist. Picus validation reports, MITRE ATT&CK mappings, and customizable dashboards show which threats were blocked or detected, where gaps remain, and whether fixes closed those gaps. The Picus URL testing module safely simulates outbound HTTP/HTTPS requests to harmful, malicious, or objectionable websites to test whether those requests are correctly blocked. The Picus URL Filtering Testing Module simulates access to real malicious and inappropriate sites across 31 categories, confirming whether controls block what they should. Recurring tests can be scheduled to maintain consistent control effectiveness.^{[2][11][13][14][15]}

Picus Cloud Security Validation runs a continuous loop across the customer's cloud. Picus Cloud Security Validation scans core AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud services, then safely simulates real attacks against what it finds. Picus gathers cloud identities and runs them through a local policy simulator to reveal which roles, policies, and entitlements can actually be abused. Picus validates with read-only access and feeds validated exposures into existing CSPM, CNAPP, and security data tooling. Cloud security audits can be scheduled weekly or run on demand after any change.^[16]

Juventus Football Club uses Picus Exposure Validation to simulate real-world attacks and continuously verify that its cybersecurity defenses protect critical systems across stadium, training, hospitality, and medical operations. Oil and gas operators use Picus to validate their defenses across connected IT and OT environments, simulating ransomware, ICS malware, and adversary techniques. Picus Threat Templates for Oil and Gas validate defenses against campaigns targeting pipelines, refineries, and industrial control systems, including Sandworm, TRITON, and Dragonfly. Picus offers audit ready reports aligned with IEC 62443, API 1164, NIST CSF, and TSA pipeline directives. Picus helps Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators continuously test the effectiveness of cybersecurity controls required by the Hong Kong CoP. Picus generates automated validation reports to demonstrate the effectiveness of security controls in maintaining compliance with CCoP 2.0 requirements and support audit reviews. Picus holds ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27701, ISO/IEC 22301, and ISO/IEC 20000-1 certificates and a SOC 2 Type 2 report.^{[1][3][4][6][7][8][9][10][12][14][15][17][18]}