Forrester has named Orca as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Native Application Protection Solutions, Q1 2026. In this evaluation of 14 vendors, the Orca Platform placed among the top CNAPP offerings in the market. Orca received above-average customer feedback in the evaluation process, along with the highest possible scores in 6 criteria within the current offering category:
- CSPM cloud coverage
- CIEM
- Agentless cloud workload protection
- IaC security
- Agentic AI and co-pilots
- Depth and breadth of third-party integrations
We see these results as confirmation that our customers love us and that we’re one of the best independent CNAPP solutions on the market.
To us, this recognition by Forrester reinforces Orca’s position at the forefront of cloud security, delivering on a strategy that is grounded in real-world, practical application. This report is an addition to our recent recognition from independent analyst firms, including being named Cloud Security Leader by Latio, and Leader in the GigaOm Radar Reports for CNAPP, Container Security, and Cloud Workload Security.
Whether customers are innovating with AI, scaling growth, reducing costs, or outpacing their competitors, Orca supports their business objectives with robust CNAPP capabilities to cover everything from observation to action.
“Agentless CWP is powerful for alerts on compute resources, as well as vulnerability and threat detection.”
The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Native Application Protection Solutions, Q1 2026, by Andras Cser et al
Customers that have experienced exponential growth in their cloud footprint, like Swiggy, love the quick time-to-value through agentless deployments to get a full picture of risk across their entire cloud estate. This also includes visibility into AI in running workloads, just as Autodesk has experienced while scaling their generative AI applications with AWS.
The 2024 State of AI report found that 56% of organizations have adopted AI services for custom applications with integrations and data specific to their environment. When the Orca Research Pod revisited the data for the 2025 State of Cloud Security, they found that number surged to 84%. We believe as more organizations want to realize the benefits of AI in their cloud native applications, CNAPP solutions need to evolve from simply seeing issues to effectively acting on them. This means a balanced approach to agentless and sensor capabilities.
Orca Sensor made its debut in this evaluation, scoring 3 out of 5 in the agent-based cloud workload protections criterion. To us, this reflects that our lightweight eBPF-based sensor is comparable to other agent-based cloud workload protections in the market. With key features like runtime privilege escalation & unusual network activity detections, file integrity monitoring, process termination through policy enforcement, and real-time detections on Window and Linux, Orca Sensor gives customers the agent-based protection they need without the performance toll that traditional agents cause.
In order for security teams to act on CNAPP telemetry effectively, comprehensive data must be delivered through a well-integrated, opinionated platform. This includes analyzing, prioritizing, and mitigating attack paths that evaluate risk across identities, data sensitivity, external exposure, code origins, and real-time threats.
“CIEM capabilities provide useful and visually pleasing access graphs, showing relationships between machine and human identities and data assets. Automatic revocation of excessive CSP admin roles is also ahead of the market.”
The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Native Application Protection Solutions, Q1 2026, by Andras Cser et al
At Orca, customer obsession isn’t just a strategy for us—it’s a mindset. It’s baked into how we hire, build, and grow. We pride ourselves on a simple, transparent pricing structure that meets our customers needs for clear, reliable growth that doesn’t crush their budget. We also don’t just listen to our customers; we act on what we hear. Their feedback shapes our roadmap, and their success is how we measure ours. Our above-average customer feedback is reflected in the report.
“Customers like the speediness of Orca Security’s response to tech support cases…”
The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Native Application Protection Solutions, Q1 2026, by Andras Cser et al
Learn more about the Orca Platform
Interested in learning more about Orca? Explore the Orca Platform—the leading CNAPP solutions that supports AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud. To get a deeper look, schedule a personalized 1:1 demo.
Disclaimer: Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.
