The Acalvio Buyer’s Guide to Cyber Deception Platforms

Deception platforms have dramatically evolved in capability over the last decade. Early honeypots and honeynets have matured into enterprise-grade deception platforms that operate across identity systems, endpoints, cloud workloads, SaaS systems, OT networks, IoT devices, and application stacks. These platforms provide defenders with a powerful mechanism to observe attacker behavior across the kill chain, detect early-stage intrusion activity with high fidelity, and reduce the operational overhead associated with traditional detection technologies.

Selecting the right deception platform requires understanding the architectural design choices, deployment models, automation capabilities, and integration patterns that influence effectiveness and operational fit. This page outlines the core considerations that security teams should evaluate when assessing deception technology.

1. Deception Authenticity and Coverage

The Deception Authenticity and Coverage category of considerations covers the quality, variety, and realism of deceptions.

The cyber deception solution must provide deceptions that blend with their surroundings.

AI-Driven Authenticity and Fidelity

A deception solution must closely analyze the surrounding environment to understand naming conventions, privilege relationships, service exposure patterns, and network activity. AI is then applied to maintain the authenticity of deceptions by aligning their properties with what the platform discovers. This use of AI ensures decoys remain indistinguishable from real systems as the environment evolves. Without this alignment, sophisticated attackers can fingerprint and avoid synthetic assets, reducing the effectiveness of deception.

Consideration

Deceptions must appear as real assets and data artifacts. An adversary interacts with them, which results in a high-fidelity alert. To achieve this, an adversary must not be able to fingerprint a deception. Fingerprinting is the process of identifying an asset as a decoy. If an adversary fingerprints a single deception, they will actively avoid other deceptions in the network, rendering the solution ineffective.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio designs deceptions to look like real assets and blend with their surroundings. The platform first collects extensive network neighborhood data. It performs this collection through built-in network discovery, integration with Active Directory for identity context, and integration with EDR tools for endpoint data. The ShadowPlex platform also allows for the manual upload of neighborhood data.

Acalvio’s AI-enabled Deception Recommendation Engine analyzes the discovered information. It then generates specific properties that enable deceptions to blend into the production network. For decoys, the engine recommends properties like hostnames, operating system versions, and services. This ensures decoys look like real production endpoints within that specific VLAN or client group. For endpoint deceptions, the engine specifies the optimal types of lures and their placement locations on individual endpoints. For honey accounts, the process defines properties that allow them to mirror real identities in Microsoft Active Directory.

Acalvio also provides features for customizing deception properties. Security teams can specify patterns for decoy hostnames or upload unique documents for placement in a share decoy. This combination of automation and customization ensures that deceptions remain authentic and effective.

The cyber deception solution must provide deceptions that are attractive to adversaries.

Consideration

A deception solution must attract an attacker to interact with its assets. To accomplish this, the solution must engineer deceptions with properties that adversaries actively seek. Simple visibility is not enough. The deceptions must appear valuable, vulnerable, or useful to an attacker’s mission.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio designs deceptions to be attractive to adversaries. The platform gives decoys and honeytokens specific properties that an adversary typically looks for while searching for the next asset to compromise.

Acalvio configures decoys for attractiveness by disguising them as enterprise assets such as database servers, web applications, and build servers. These decoys can also expose specific services, ports, or even known vulnerabilities. Attackers performing reconnaissance scans identify these decoys as easy targets.

Similarly, the platform strategically plants honeytokens, or breadcrumbs, in locations attackers commonly search. This includes placing deceptive cached credentials in LSASS memory or deceptive RDP and SSH keys. These lures act as high-fidelity tripwires. They appear as legitimate credentials and direct attackers toward the network decoys, diverting them away from production assets.

By combining realistic blending with strategically attractive properties, ShadowPlex ensures adversaries are detected at the earliest stages of an attack.

The cyber deception solution must provide a comprehensive palette of deceptions.

Consideration

Enterprise networks contain diverse assets. IT networks primarily host workstations and servers. Cloud networks include workloads, storage buckets, and identity services. OT/IoT networks are composed of devices like PLCs, NVRs, and DVMs. An effective deception solution must deploy deceptions that emulate the types of assets found in each specific network segment.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex provides a comprehensive and extensible palette of deceptions. This palette covers diverse assets across IT, cloud, and OT/IoT environments. The decoys can accurately mimic the real assets found in any specific network segment.

For traditional IT networks, the palette includes decoys for Windows and Linux servers, workstations, and several types of key applications.

For cloud environments, ShadowPlex provides cloud-native deceptions. These include decoys for cloud workloads, and storage objects like AWS S3 buckets.

The platform offers specialized decoys for OT and IoT environments. This includes simulations for assets like CCTV cameras, printers, PLCs, and others. These decoys support native OT protocols such as Modbus, BACnet, and S7, allowing them to engage attackers targeting industrial control systems.

Administrators can also upload a golden VM image to create a custom, high-interaction decoy.

In addition to decoys, the platform deploys honeytokens as breadcrumbs and baits on endpoints for early detection. Breadcrumbs lead attackers toward decoys, while baits act as independent tripwires. Honey accounts registered in Microsoft Active Directory emulate deceptive users to detect identity attacks.

The cyber deception solution must enable customization of deceptions.

Consideration

To deceive sophisticated adversaries, a deception platform must allow its deceptions to be customized. This personalization should be based on enterprise-specific content, naming conventions, and other environmental considerations to ensure authenticity.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex provides deep customization options across its entire deception palette. These capabilities allow security teams to enhance the AI-driven recommendations with enterprise-specific content and templates.

Security teams can customize and upload content for Web Server decoys, Database decoys, and Share decoys. This includes the ability to modify the login page of a web decoy to resemble any specific application or enterprise portal. Teams can also customize decoy ports to match their environment. For highly specialized assets, administrators can create custom high-interaction decoys by uploading and configuring their own golden images. This enables the collection of detailed adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

This flexibility extends to endpoint deceptions. Teams can upload specific credential formats for use in breadcrumbs. They can also beaconize custom documents to serve as bait. This level of customization ensures the platform provides value across different industry verticals.

The cyber deception solution must provide high-interaction decoys that match real enterprise applications and capture a complete record of all attacker activity.

Consideration

To engage sophisticated adversaries, the solution must provide decoys that match specific enterprise applications. These decoys must be highly authentic and indistinguishable from real production assets. They must be fully functional, high-interaction systems, not just simple emulations. They must be capable of capturing a complete, high-fidelity record of all attacker activity.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex supports the creation of custom, high-interaction decoys by allowing administrators to upload and configure golden VM images of their specific enterprise applications and servers. These custom are fully functional, indistinguishable from production assets, and can be configured to intentionally expose specific vulnerabilities.

When an adversary interacts with a custom decoy, the platform records detailed telemetry, including all commands typed, keystrokes, and file interactions. This data is bundled with forensic artifacts like PCAPs, IOCs, and file/memory snapshots, which allow for deep analysis of the attacker’s actions. The system also provides a replay option with screenshots, enabling security teams to view the attacker’s session as it took place.

2. Automation, Scale, and Ease of Use

This category focuses on the platform’s architecture and its ability to be deployed and managed efficiently at an enterprise scale.

The cyber deception solution must automate deployment and management of deceptions.

Consideration

Deploying deceptions across a large enterprise network is a complex task. Manual deployment is not scalable and can take days or weeks. An effective deception platform requires automation to direct and orchestrate the entire deployment and management lifecycle, ensuring coverage is both comprehensive and current.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex automates deception deployment and management, eliminating manual, time-consuming processes. The platform uses an AI-driven Deception Recommendation Engine to analyze the network and recommend deceptions. These recommendations form the foundation for playbooks, which are pre-configured collections of deceptions designed for specific use cases like Ransomware Protection.

Security teams use the centralized Acalvio administration console to review, customize, and deploy these playbooks to sites or subnets. The deployment process is fully automated. The system projects network decoys into designated VLANs. For endpoint deceptions, ShadowPlex uses its agentless architecture and pre-built integrations with existing endpoint tools to deploy artifacts at scale.

The platform also supports auto-scaling, dynamically deploying new decoys as the network environment changes. Deception lifecycle management is also automated. ShadowPlex supports the auto-refresh of endpoint deceptions, ensuring they remain fresh and relevant without administrative intervention. This automated, AI-driven approach ensures deception coverage remains comprehensive and aligned with the production environment.

The cyber deception solution must occupy a minimal infrastructure footprint for enterprise-scale deployment.

Consideration

A deception solution must use a lightweight architecture. This enables deployment across the entire enterprise, including numerous subnets, remote offices, and cloud environments. It must operate without requiring significant compute, storage, or network changes. A resource-intensive platform becomes prohibitively expensive and difficult to maintain. This introduces operational friction and increases the total cost of ownership (TCO).

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex is designed with a lightweight, scalable architecture that maintains a minimal footprint. This design delivers comprehensive deception, detection, and response capabilities. The platform’s two primary components are the ShadowPlex Server (ADC) and sensors. Together, these components provide full operational coverage across on-premises and cloud environments.

The Acalvio Deception Center (ADC) is the centralized management and analytics engine. Sensors are lightweight, distributed components deployed across enterprise subnets. These sensors establish secure connectivity between the ADC and two key areas: the network zones hosting deceptions, and the existing security platforms like SIEM, EDR, and SOAR.

Efficiency in decoy deployment is achieved through Acalvio’s patented Deception Farms^® architecture. This architecture uses innovations like Fluid Deception^® and Reflection Technology. It projects a large number of decoys from a very small footprint. The solution also uses logical constructs called “sites” to simplify large-scale administration across many subnets.

The platform maintains a minimal footprint on endpoints as well. Acalvio uses an agentless approach to deploy endpoint deceptions. It leverages existing security controls, such as EDR agents, to deploy and manage these deceptions. This method extends deception coverage across the network without adding any new agents or increasing the infrastructure presence.

The cyber deception solution must provide automated, agentless deployment and refresh of endpoint deceptions.

Consideration

Deploying deceptions on thousands of endpoints is crucial for effective detection. A solution must achieve this without introducing new agents. Installing new agents can create compatibility issues, administrative overhead, and unnecessary overlap with existing endpoint tools. This consideration demands built-in orchestration for automated, agentless deception deployment and refresh to improve operational efficiency.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio achieves scalable, agentless deployment by leveraging native integrations with existing enterprise infrastructure. The solution provides pre-built integrations with leading endpoint protection tools, such as EDR, to distribute deception artifacts. This approach uses existing, trusted channels to precisely place honeytokens across thousands of endpoints.

The Acalvio platform includes built-in orchestration to fully automate the deception lifecycle. From the central Administration Console, security teams can schedule periodic and automated refresh of all endpoint deceptions. This auto-refresh capability ensures deceptive credentials and lures are continuously updated. This process prevents deceptions from becoming stale and maintains their realism over time.

Acalvio does not require the installation of any proprietary software or new agents on production endpoints. This design eliminates agent compatibility conflicts, preserves endpoint performance, and removes the administrative overhead of managing another agent.

The cyber deception solution must provide both on-premises and cloud deployment options.

Consideration

Modern enterprises operate across complex hybrid infrastructures. These environments combine private data centers, virtualized systems, and multiple public clouds. A flexible deployment model is crucial. It must extend consistent deception coverage across this entire digital estate.

This where they reside. A flexible model also enables compliance with strict data residency regulations. It supports secure operation in air-gapped networks. Finally, it aligns the security solution with the organization’s broader IT strategy, whether that strategy is cloud-first or on-premises controlled.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex provides complete deployment flexibility, enabling organizations to protect assets across hybrid environments and align with any IT strategy. The server component of ShadowPlex, Acalvio Deception Center (ADC), can be deployed in several formats:

• Acalvio-Hosted ADC: The ADC is deployed and managed by Acalvio in its secure cloud environment.
• Enterprise-Hosted (Cloud) ADC: The enterprise deploys the ADC within its own public cloud subscription, such as AWS, GCP, or Microsoft Azure.
• On-Premises ADC: The enterprise deploys the ADC as a virtual appliance on an on-premises hypervisor, like VMware ESXi.
• Hardware ADC: The enterprise deploys the ADC as a physical appliance within its on-premises data centers.

This range of options ensures Acalvio can provide consistent deception coverage regardless of an organization’s infrastructure choices.

The cyber deception solution must provide a centralized console for deploying deceptions and viewing alerts.

Consideration

Enterprise networks are distributed across on-premises data centers and multiple cloud environments. Managing security policies and deployments across these disparate locations presents a significant challenge. A centralized console is essential for unifying all aspects of deception-based security. This single interface simplifies configuration, integration, deception deployment, and monitoring. It ensures consistent policy application and provides a complete, correlated view of threats.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio provides a centralized Administration Console. This single, web-based user interface enables Security teams to configure, monitor, and manage the entire solution.

Administrators use this central console to deploy and manage all deceptions across the enterprise. It provides a Deception Mesh view, offering a visual map of all deployed decoys, breadcrumbs, and baits across every subnet. Teams can centrally deploy predefined playbooks or custom-configured deceptions to both on-premises and cloud environments from this single interface.

The console also serves as the command center for monitoring attacker activity and viewing high-fidelity alerts. It provides a real-time dashboard and triaged incident views that automatically fuse related deception events into a single, actionable case. Analysts can drill down into these incidents to see a timeline view of the attack progression and review detailed forensic data, including MITRE ATT&CK^® classifications.

3. Operational Efficiency and Ecosystem Integration

The Operational Efficiency and Ecosystem Integration category of considerations addresses how the solution fits into the existing security stack and the value it provides to the security team.

The cyber deception solution must integrate with existing security controls in the organization.

Ease of Deployment Through Native Integrations

A deception solution must deploy cleanly across the enterprise without requiring new agents or additional operational overhead. Native integrations with existing endpoint security tools enable the platform to place deceptions and honeytokens through trusted channels already present in the environment. This approach minimizes installation friction, simplifies rollout, and reduces the administrative effort associated with maintaining another agent or software component. By relying on integrations rather than new infrastructure, organizations gain faster time to value and lower long-term complexity.

Consideration

An organization deploys a range of security controls, such as firewalls, EDR, and SIEM or SOAR. Each of these controls addresses a specific security requirement. A cyber deception solution must mesh well with these security controls. It should enhance these investments instead of attempting to replace any of them.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

ShadowPlex leverages and augments existing enterprise controls by providing a layered, preemptive defense without replacing existing protections. The platform enhances defense-in-depth through seamless integrations.

• SIEM: ShadowPlex sends enriched deception alerts for contextual correlation and compliance reporting.
• SOAR: ShadowPlex triggers automated playbooks for rapid response.
• EDR/XDR: ShadowPlex deploys endpoint deceptions, enriches incident telemetry, and initiates quarantine or isolation.
• Active Directory: ShadowPlex discovers assets and registers decoys to enhance realism.
• Collaboration Tools (Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams): ShadowPlex delivers critical deception alerts to analysts in real time.
• Sandbox/Reputation Services: ShadowPlex submits suspicious artifacts for behavioral and reputation analysis.

This approach allows enterprises to leverage their existing investments. For example, security teams can integrate deception and identity telemetry with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, Splunk, Palo Alto Cortex XDR, and other SOC tools. This integration works without requiring proprietary connectors. All data exchange and orchestration workflows use extensible schemas and policy-level configurations, ensuring easy management of ecosystem integrations.

The cyber deception solution must reduce the TCO while improving the ROI of the organization’s security infrastructure.

Consideration

A cyber deception solution must provide a clear return on investment (ROI) and actively reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO). The platform must lower operational costs and leverage existing security investments.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio reduces TCO and improves ROI in several ways:

• Patented Deception Farms^® Architecture: Acalvio ShadowPlex uses its patented Deception Farms^® architecture. This design employs Reflection Technology to project multiple, unique decoy instances from a single system. This one-to-many model improves resource efficiency. It significantly reduces TCO by minimizing the need for third-party OS and application licenses.
• AI-Enabled Automation: The platform lowers operational costs by using AI to automate core administrative tasks. Acalvio automates network discovery, deception recommendation, and placement. This automation eliminates the complex manual effort tied to traditional deception configuration and reduces the administrator’s workload.
• Pre-integration to Eliminate Custom Programming: Custom integrations require significant time and specialized expertise, which increases cost and delays deployment. Acalvio provides pre-built integrations for common SIEM, SOAR, and EDR platforms. This approach avoids the need for costly, time-consuming field programming.
• Augmenting Existing Security Controls: Acalvio improves the ROI of the existing security stack. By integrating with SIEM, SOAR, and EDR tools, it enriches their telemetry with high-fidelity deception alerts. This process makes the entire security infrastructure more effective and valuable.

The cyber deception solution must provide built-in automated alert triaging for actionable intelligence against adversaries.

Adversary Pathing and Controlled Engagement

A deception solution should not only detect adversaries but also influence where they move once they begin reconnaissance. By strategically placing decoys and honeytokens, the platform can guide an attacker toward synthetic assets and away from production systems. This controlled engagement provides security teams with deeper visibility into attacker behavior while keeping real assets out of harm’s way. Effective adversary pathing increases the intelligence value of each interaction and strengthens overall detection coverage.

Consideration

Security teams are often overwhelmed by a high volume of alerts. A key requirement for any new solution is its ability to reduce the manual effort spent on investigation. The platform must automate alert correlation and deduplication, providing actionable intelligence directly to the SOC team.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex features built-in automated triaging to provide actionable, high-fidelity intelligence. The platform does not generate numerous, isolated alerts. Instead, ShadowPlex automatically correlates and fuses all deception events from a single compromised endpoint or identity into one consolidated incident. This automated correlation eliminates manual alert deduplication and reduces the administrative workload.

The ShadowPlex Administration Console presents this triaged incident in a clear timeline view. Security teams can visualize the attack’s progression through a sequence of individual deception events, from reconnaissance to credential theft. The platform automatically enriches the incident with detailed forensic data and contextual information. This includes attacker TTPs mapped directly to the MITRE ATT&CK^® framework.

This process delivers actionable intelligence, not just raw data. The SOC team receives a single, high-confidence alert that includes the source IP address, targeted decoys, services accessed, and specific MITRE ATT&CK^® techniques. This information enables analysts to immediately understand the threat’s scope and severity, reduces alert fatigue, and accelerates incident response.

4. Advanced Capabilities and Use Cases

The Advanced Capabilities and Use Cases category of considerations includes specific, high-value features that address modern threat vectors beyond traditional network deception.

The cyber deception solution should provide Identity Protection features.

Consideration

Identity is a primary attack vector. Adversaries use compromised credentials for lateral movement, a technique that often bypasses traditional security controls. An effective deception solution must provide specific capabilities to detect identity-based reconnaissance and credential theft.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio ShadowPlex provides Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) capabilities. It integrates deceptions directly into the identity infrastructure. The platform uses a pre-built, read-only integration with Microsoft Active Directory (AD). This integration registers deceptive objects like users, servers, and shares as legitimate, discoverable assets. This ensures they appear authentic during attacker reconnaissance.

The platform deploys two main types of identity deceptions: Honey Accounts and Honeytokens. Honey Accounts are deceptive user and service accounts registered in the production Active Directory. Administrators can configure these accounts with specific attributes, such as Service Principal Names (SPNs). This configuration creates high-fidelity traps for attacks like Kerberoasting.

Honeytokens are deceptive credential profiles planted on production endpoints. These lures mimic cached credentials in memory (LSASS), saved RDP or SSH keys, and browser artifacts. ShadowPlex generates an immediate, high-fidelity alert when an adversary interacts with these honeytokens or queries a honey account. This process enables the early detection of credential theft and lateral movement.

The cyber deception solution should provide visibility features for determining the identity security posture of the organization.

Consideration

Attackers actively perform reconnaissance on Microsoft Active Directory to find weaknesses. They seek misconfigurations, exposed credentials, and clear attack paths to privileged accounts. An organization must have visibility into this identity attack surface. This visibility allows teams to identify and remediate exposures before an adversary can exploit them.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio provides this visibility through its Active Directory Insights capability. This feature performs a comprehensive, read-only assessment of the production Active Directory. It identifies misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and exposures that adversaries actively seek.

The assessment delivers an attacker’s perspective on the AD attack surface. It uncovers critical risks such as shadow administrators, over-permissioned delegations, and Kerberoastable service accounts. This provides a clear map of potential attack paths to high-value assets.

These insights serve two primary functions. First, they enable security teams to proactively remediate vulnerabilities and reduce the attack surface. Second, the output guides the enterprise’s overall deception strategy. Security teams use this data to deploy targeted Honey Accounts and other identity deceptions to protect the high-value assets identified by the feature.

The cyber deception solution should provide Threat Hunting and Confirmation features.

Consideration

Proactive threat hunting assumes attackers may already be inside the network. Defense teams form hypotheses about potential compromises, such as an adversary being active in a specific subnet. They require specialized tools to test these hypotheses safely. The deception solution must provide features that allow analysts to dynamically deploy targeted deceptions. This capability acts as a high-fidelity confirmation mechanism. If an attacker interacts with the decoy, it confirms the hypothesis and reveals the adversary’s presence.

How Acalvio meets this consideration

Acalvio directly supports proactive threat hunting through its dedicated Threat Investigation capability. This feature empowers security teams to dynamically deploy new decoys, breadcrumbs, and baits into the live production environment during an active investigation. This allows analysts to adapt the deception coverage based on observed attacker behavior or to test a specific hypothesis.

This dynamic deployment capability is the core of threat confirmation. If analysts suspect an adversary is moving laterally in a specific subnet, they can use Threat Investigation to place a relevant decoy and breadcrumbs in that attacker’s path. Any interaction with these deceptions serves as high-fidelity confirmation of the threat.

When an attacker engages with a dynamically deployed deception, ShadowPlex captures in-depth attacker intelligence. This includes the TTPs mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK^® framework, forensic artifacts, and PCAPs. This approach allows security teams to confirm latent threats that have evaded other security controls. It provides controlled opportunities for attackers to reveal themselves and their methods.

What does autonomous deception mean?

Autonomous deception involves the use of AI and machine learning to manage the deception lifecycle. Acalvio ShadowPlex offers an autonomous deception platform that automates the recommendation, deployment, and dynamic refresh of deceptions. This process ensures that deceptions remain authentic and effective without constant manual intervention.

How does Acalvio improve ROI while reducing TCO?

Acalvio lowers TCO through its patented Deception Farms^® architecture, which projects thousands of decoys from a minimal footprint to eliminate high hardware and licensing costs. AI-driven automation further reduces operational overhead by streamlining deployment and maintenance tasks. The platform improves ROI by leveraging existing investments in security controls through native, agentless integrations that require no custom programming. In addition, automated alert triaging delivers high-fidelity intelligence for SOC automation, which significantly reduces SOC investigation time and maximizes the efficiency of security teams.

How does Acalvio deploy endpoint deceptions without agents?

Acalvio ShadowPlex is an agentless platform that integrates natively with existing endpoint security tools. It leverages these trusted, pre-existing agents to orchestrate the deployment and automated refresh of endpoint deceptions.

How does Acalvio ensure its deceptions are authentic?

The Acalvio deception platform’s AI-driven recommendation engine analyzes the surrounding network environment, including Active Directory and endpoint data. It then automatically recommends and configures deceptions with properties that allow them to blend in seamlessly with real production assets.

How does Acalvio ShadowPlex reduce alert fatigue for a SOC team?

Acalvio generates only high-fidelity alerts, as any interaction with a deception is a definitive sign of malicious activity. The platform also automatically triages and correlates multiple events from a single attacker into one consolidated incident. This process eliminates the noise of false positives and provides SOC teams with actionable, pre-vetted intelligence instead of a stream of raw alerts.

Take the Next Step

If you want to validate whether your current evaluation criteria fully capture the capabilities outlined in this guide, our team can review your approach and help identify any blind spots. The goal is to ensure your selection process highlights platforms that provide true authenticity, rich attacker engagement, low operational overhead, and seamless integration with your existing security stack.