Horizon3.ai NodeZero Platform

The NodeZero Platform  is used internally every month, aligned with the patch cycle, to run the pen test and validate the patching that was done previously and find anything new in the environment. It is run at least monthly, and if something else comes up, it is run between those times. Additionally, The NodeZero Platform  is used to perform pen testing for co-ops. Since some internet infrastructure is shared with co-ops, the platform can be deployed and a virtual machine can be spun up in their environment. They provide IP ranges, the pen test is deployed, the report comes back, and it is shared with them. This has been a great capability to provide to co-ops.

My favorite feature of The NodeZero Platform is that all of it has been really good. The reporting piece is very clear and very useful, which was a big piece from the start. The reporting is huge, and the fact that it learns the environment on an ongoing basis is impressive. An external third-party pen tester is brought in every two years, and the plan is to move it to every three years. After the third party conducts the pen test, The NodeZero Platform is run, and it finds the same things they found and sometimes a few other things that they did not even identify. It has stood up against that test every time.

The feature that allows security teams to fix and retest vulnerabilities instantly adds a lot of quick mitigation and the ability to fix issues on the fly. Everything that has been added and modified and improved since acquiring the tool has worked seamlessly.

The Real Attack Capabilities help in identifying vulnerabilities in on-premises systems because if patching was missed, it will identify that. With deployment across the system, any recent vulnerability will be found. The way it learns the environment makes it an easy-to-use tool. It does what it says it is going to do, which is finding vulnerabilities as they appear.

The Endpoint Security  Effectiveness feature helps in understanding potential security threats better because everything that it identifies improves things on an ongoing basis. It ensures that everything is kept current, so it adds an extra layer to what is being done with the main EDR solution.

The speed of the scans takes some time, but in my opinion, it is not surprising for what it is doing. It could be a little quicker, but speed does not necessarily mean it is going to be better, since speed does not equate to doing what it needs to do.

The NodeZero Platform has been used for about close to four years.

Regarding stability, it has never crashed, and there has not been any lagging from deployment or running. It is sometimes run randomly to see if managed service personnel will get alerted, and it has performed as expected. There has not been anything with lag or alerts, it has not crashed, and it has not caused issues.

The scalability of The NodeZero Platform has been great because it is offered out to the 26 co-ops that are worked with, and over half of those have had it run on their environment, and it has worked out great.

Technical support has never been contacted because there have never been any issues that required reaching out to them.

There have not been any alternatives encountered that can be compared with The NodeZero Platform. After conversations with people and they have looked at it, nothing has stood out as being worth even trying to test. There is nothing that compares to it from everything that has been seen.

The initial deployment of The NodeZero Platform was easy, from what is remembered, as that was about four years ago.

The networking team was involved in this type of job, and it was probably just one of the networking team members and a senior engineer.

A reduction in remediation time has been seen because it is finding things before they happen. Much time is not being spent on remediation since acquiring it because it is finding things before they become an issue. Even if there is a zero-day and patching is done and then run, it verifies that, so it is preventing a lot of remediation time with anything.

The pricing has been good, as it has not made huge leaps. Contracts and renewals are handled, so the changes have not been astronomical. It has stayed typically below what was expected for the changes as contracts are renewed, so it has all been fine.

The overall rating given to The NodeZero Platform is ten out of ten.

We use The NodeZero Platform  for control validation and we are also looking for the likelihood of vulnerabilities.

I think the one-click feature to fix and re-test vulnerabilities is great. This feature allows us to validate whether the remediation actually resolved the issue. It's pretty easy. You click it and it starts scanning. This is super helpful. I don't think anybody else has anything like that.

The NodeZero Platform 's real attack capabilities help in identifying vulnerabilities on our on-prem systems because it provides actual vulnerabilities by attacking our systems. It shows us whether it really was able to do or meet the objectives that a threat actor could do. It really helps identify the likelihood instead of simply indicating a potential vulnerability.

The NodeZero Platform impacts my understanding of potential security threats in an eye-opening way. It provides validation of the actual security flaw, and it also provides remediation steps. Usually, it's an article that's written up, but it also shows proof as well.

I haven't seen much of an impact on my remediation time from using The NodeZero Platform. I think what it does is it justifies a vulnerable aspect. For the most part, it does speed up remediation because we have proof that there is a vulnerability. We classify those vulnerabilities as a POF or a Pants on Fire and they have to be remediated within 72 hours. It does help remediate.

I think The NodeZero Platform could improve by leveraging GPUs for password cracking, which would be pretty good.

I have used the solution for about two and a half years.

I haven't seen any stability issues such as crashing, lagging, or downtime. I have seen that their portal has been inaccessible for probably about 30 minutes one time.

The NodeZero Platform is very scalable.

I have never had to contact their technical support or customer support.

We've used Pantera, Symptom and Attack IQ.

The initial deployment was so easy. It only took us about five minutes.

I think the pricing could be a little bit more competitive. For example, Centerra had a little bit more flexible pricing than NodeZero.

I would say Pentera  is the closest competitor to The NodeZero Platform. When I compare them, I think the flexibility of scanning is where Horizon 3 edges Pentera . Pentera does a better job at cracking passwords, but deploying remote nodes is very difficult. It's kind of convoluted, so it makes it difficult to operate. The NodeZero Platform's pricing is competitive. I think it could be a little bit more competitive. For example, Pentera had a little bit more flexible pricing than The NodeZero Platform.

Based on everything we've looked at and used in the past, I would rate The NodeZero Platform a 10 out of 10 as they are the best.

For us, The NodeZero Platform  is literally the single best security solution we have because the way that it works is we're able to scan every part of our network, both internally and externally, and then get completely actionable feedback that doesn't matter if it's for an application developer or a network admin. The way that the feedback is presented leaves no room for what is the problem. Our use cases are internal network scans, external penetration tests, and then all of the remediation that goes along with those two results. The final use case that we use is we actively scan every single network password and make sure that no one has password reuse, duplication, or any of the things that have gotten a lot of other companies in trouble. This is one of their easiest features to start with. That is the primary use case.

The favorite feature of The NodeZero Platform  is that it's easiest from a password perspective because when examining all the things in cybersecurity and all the things in the news, it almost always comes down to somehow the bad guys got someone's username and password. Being able to scan literally thousands of passwords to see if there's an issue with them and then immediately take action is amazing because it keeps our network safe and we don't have to worry about constantly having accounts taken over by criminals. By immediately taking action, they told us about this thing that allows the security teams to fix and retest vulnerabilities instantly, which is their one-click feature.

For us, it's so quick to test every single password. We're able to get a list of anyone that has a password that is compromised because some other website, they use that same password. We're able to actually just rescan all passwords in such a short period, we don't need to use the one-click verification. That's more for if there's a vulnerability on a specific computer or server, which we do use that as well. But just the ability to scan all passwords in such a short time is my favorite feature.

The NodeZero Platform's real attack capabilities have helped in identifying vulnerabilities in our on-prem systems in a few ways. First and foremost, other security platforms used to have so many things that they would report on. Because they would give so many issues and in a way that wasn't clear, a lot of times there was ambiguity and the different sub-teams within IT would disagree on how the problem was or if there was a problem. The way that it's helped us is that it got rid of all of that confusion. We're able to see an issue and then resolve an issue. The one-click verify has helped us several times because in the past, we would do a penetration test once a year and if we thought we fixed it, we would wait a whole other year until we figured it out. Now with the one-click verify, our team will take an action, scan it again, and then a lot of times, even though the fix is pretty straightforward, it doesn't solve the issue. For instance, everyone has NVIDIA in the news all the time because they have these amazing graphics cards. We had an issue. We thought we resolved it. We updated a version, we did the one-click verify, the issue was still there. It said to upgrade to the newest version. So we upgraded another version, did the one-click verify, still was an issue. We ended up going through four or five different iterations and then realized what was actually the problem is that one of the checkboxes needed to be checked differently across our network. Being able to actually go through those iterations so quickly has really helped from a security standpoint.

One of the things that we've shared with Horizon is just the reporting. They've made a lot of changes over time, but when examining computers, most average normal people don't look at a computer and identify it as 114.82.117.180. They identify it as 'the printer for accounting.' When many of the reports give the very detailed technical IP address or serial number, that's really not helpful for anyone other than the person, the hands-on person that's trying to remediate it. All the managers, all the leaders, having information in that format isn't helpful. Being able to have information about what those devices are would be very helpful.

There's a technical reason they can't just have an easy button because some people have really complicated networks. When examining things for the average company, the average executive, that 114 number, there's only one of those. But if examining an AT&T or a Walmart, it isn't unique. They haven't solved that problem. But for the 90% of companies, being able to have just a human readable name for all devices on your network in all of the reports all of the time would be the most beneficial.

We've been using The NodeZero Platform for a little over four years now.

I have not seen any lagging, crashing, downtime, or anything with The NodeZero Platform. I had some unusual situations where because some of our third parties had their systems misconfigured, our scan would run forever because we would start scanning beyond our own four walls of our company. But we've never had major issues with the product itself.

Our company has about 2,000 people, about 5,000 total devices including phones and network equipment. We're a medium-sized company and it takes us a few hours to run every single scan. I am uncertain how it would work if you're on an AT&T or a Walmart where you have a million network objects. I would think it does fairly, but I don't have the experience to say anything more than what we do, which is a mid-sized company.

I have contacted their technical support or customer support many times. The main reason that we contact their technical support and customer support isn't because their product isn't working, it's because their product tells us we have an issue and we need a little bit more help on how we actually resolve the issue. They'll have really good guidance, but sometimes we need to say how they really found this because we're seeing this other flag set this way and we need their help. So we reach out to their support to help resolve the issues that we have within our own environment, not with their product.

My team's been very happy with The NodeZero Platform support. They're not 100%, but their support is above average. Sometimes even their support doesn't know why we're seeing certain issues. But the vast majority of times they are able to resolve the exact questions my team has on the first attempt, which is really good for customer or technical support. On a scale from 1 to 10, most of the time I'd give them a 10 out of 10. Sometimes you get people and it's not their best subject. Not every person is always 100% with every issue, but grading against other customer supports of similar products, 10 out of 10.

The initial deployment of The NodeZero Platform was extremely easy. They basically just need you to install a scanner on your network or wherever you want to scan from. Then you just click a couple of buttons and wait a few hours and then voila, you have results. We've learned a lot over time where there's certain things that maybe we weren't doing as optimally as we wanted, but the initial deployment from the time that we saw a demo to the time that we had some production results was extremely fast. It was same day. I don't know if it was two hours or four hours, but it was very quick.

We have used alternatives to The NodeZero Platform. We originally did several proof of concepts and looked at several competitors. What we really appreciated about Horizon is they actually attack your network. They literally do the test to see if something is open, whereas other tools would just say it's on this version and we know this version has this issue. We've looked at a lot of other tools. We really appreciated Horizon. In the four years, we also do a lot of tools that aren't 100% competitors to The NodeZero Platform, but they do many of the same things. They scan your network, they tell you the devices that are there, they tell you if there's different types of configurations. For Microsoft, we use tools that actually tell us if Microsoft is secure. For our storage devices or our network devices, every one of those tools has their own scanners. We use all of the vendor-specific, which is only good for that one vendor, but it also helps us validate that The NodeZero Platform has been spot on and has been finding all the things that we would hope it would.

The NodeZero Platform helps us to understand better the potential security threats. We don't really use it that way because for us, we're able to scan all of our internal network and all of our external network and have so few issues, we don't really have to worry about hypothetically there's this issue in the wild or there's this issue that's going around with other companies, because our list is so short now and we're just able to resolve everything. We don't use it really as a knowledge tool to inform us on what's going on. We have a lot of other literature to keep us appraised on what's going on. We use it more of just validating that everything we do is right and we don't have to fret about a bunch of hypotheticals. On a scale from 1 to 10, The NodeZero Platform rates a 10 out of 10 overall as it is the best security investment we've ever made, mainly because it got all of our IT people talking together and seeing the issues as they truly were, and that visibility knocked down a lot of walls between teams.

I use The NodeZero Platform  as a consultant on penetration testing engagements for various customers. This might be different than some of their more common use cases where companies use it internally. The primary use case is for penetration testing engagements, and the main driver for having The NodeZero Platform  is that it's a force multiplier for me as an individual to perform more penetration testing without additional human resources.

My favorite feature about The NodeZero Platform is that it's autonomous, and it truly delivers on that promise. It can be set and forgotten while it performs its tasks. It does exactly what it claims to do.

I started with The NodeZero Platform when it was less mature. Anytime I encountered something annoying or identified a gap that needed attention, they had already fixed or added it by the time I would have requested it. The product is being rapidly developed at this stage. There really isn't anything feature-wise that I would request or change because it's a good product. It does what it claims and excels at finding issues and covering large environments so humans don't have to perform repetitive tasks for extended periods. This allows us to focus on what's important: fixing and protecting systems. If there was one thing I would change, I would want their consulting licensing to return to being unlimited.

I have been using The NodeZero Platform for four years this month.

In the early stages, I experienced issues with large penetration tests where things might get delayed or require intervention, but I cannot remember the last time that occurred. While one of their main selling points is that it's safe to run in production, we might still try to avoid unnecessary risk. For companies operating during normal business hours, we might conduct penetration testing at night. When using SaaS-based products at night, maintenance windows can cause downtime, but I haven't encountered any of these issues with The NodeZero Platform. I cannot recall any instances of downtime or the platform being offline.

I have used it for tests ranging from tens to thousands to tens of thousands of assets, and I haven't encountered any trouble scaling. While I wouldn't say it's infinitely scalable, it certainly handles scaling effectively.

The support currently is really good. When I have questions or concerns, I receive responses promptly. They've added a chatbot which isn't particularly useful, but when it can't answer questions, it forwards messages to human support. I typically receive human responses within 12 hours, usually the same day or next day. Previously, with time-sensitive engagements, I would worry about resolving issues before deadlines. That concern has diminished as they've become more responsive and require less escalation to engineering. Support cases are now handled more efficiently, either by directing to documentation or providing workarounds for project completion.

The setup process is extremely straightforward. It has become even easier with the addition of Runners feature, which allows for automatic setup of repeated tests throughout the year. The initial setup takes approximately 30 minutes, mostly spent reading documentation, as the process is primarily point-and-click.

I have used three alternatives: Pentera , Core Impact , and Metasploit  Professional . Core Impact  and Metasploit  Professional  aren't direct competitors as they are penetration testing toolkits with built-in automation. Pentera  markets itself similarly to The NodeZero Platform. Compared to Pentera, The NodeZero Platform requires less setup and delivers higher quality results. Pentera follows a consistent pattern of running vulnerability scans and attempting exploits, producing results similar to vulnerability scans. The NodeZero Platform varies its approach and continues exploring potential vulnerabilities more thoroughly, similar to a real threat actor.

The NodeZero Platform has helped identify vulnerabilities with on-premises systems effectively. They handle all technical aspects internally. I have given The NodeZero Platform a rating of 9 out of 10.

My use cases for The NodeZero Platform involve using the tool as a validation tool on top of existing vulnerability management processes. The general idea is that if I identify a subset of vulnerabilities that might be of interest to an attacker, I use The NodeZero Platform to validate my assumptions. Essentially, I'm using it as a red team validation tool to test and validate blue team findings.

The NodeZero Platform's real attack capabilities help identify vulnerabilities on my on-premise systems by adding an element of validation and offensive security testing on top of known vulnerabilities. That's the main use case and the consistent configuration purpose.

The feature that allows security teams to fix and retest vulnerabilities instantly is very useful, even though it may not happen literally 'instantly.' It's a necessary tool for any organization to understand whether vulnerabilities are genuinely exploitable by attackers. With its near-real-time testing capabilities, it's an essential part of any security portfolio.

The Endpoint Security Effectiveness feature impacts my understanding of potential security threats by providing validation through endpoint testing. The NodeZero Platform deploys a script to verify whether endpoint protection tools such as EDR or EPP can detect and prevent attacks. This validation ensures that endpoint protection is configured correctly, revealing that default settings often don't work as expected. This makes the feature unique, as no other vendor seems to offer such validation capabilities.

The areas for improvement for The NodeZero Platform involve integration and automation. It would be beneficial if it could integrate directly with vulnerability management tools such as Rapid7, Tenable, or Qualys. Such integration would allow the platform to automatically import data, identify vulnerable systems, and test targets immediately, potentially even enabling automated feedback loops for rescanning. Currently, this process is manual. Native API-based integration would make the workflow far more efficient.

I have been using The NodeZero Platform in my career for about two and a half years, and I think it's coming up on the third year.

My thoughts about the stability of The NodeZero Platform are that it's not an issue in production. During initial testing in a VirtualBox virtual machine, it was less stable due to insufficient resources. The system requires fast SSD storage, at least 16 GB of RAM, and a 1G network interface. Once properly provisioned, it runs stably without issues.

The scalability of The NodeZero Platform is limited by our license to 1,000 IPs, so my experience beyond that is limited. However, we successfully tested multiple NodeZero scanners running concurrently without any concerns. The system scales well within the licensed range.

I have contacted The NodeZero Platform's technical support once in two and a half years. The issue was related to the reporting process getting stuck during telemetry capture and report generation. The support team resolved it quickly by restarting the process. I rate the support experience as 10 out of 10.

The initial deployment of The NodeZero Platform has two components: external and internal. For the external scanner, which uses AWS hosting, setup takes just minutes once the cloud space is provisioned. The tool performs domain and IP validation (whois, DNS lookup, etc.) before allowing scans, which can take up to 24 hours.

For internal deployment, it depends on corporate practices. Our process took about two weeks due to our sprint cycle and change management procedures. For larger or more complex network environments, deployment may take longer. Ideally, a NodeZero scanner should be positioned in each segmented subnet for full coverage.

Regarding pricing for The NodeZero Platform, I can say it's reasonable and the vendor is flexible. When discussing licensing, they were initially limited to 10,000 IPs, but agreed to let us target 1,000 IPs instead. That flexibility allowed us to use the tool effectively despite a smaller license count. While managing subsets of IPs introduces some overhead, the flexibility and support make the pricing worthwhile.

The NodeZero Platform requires minimal maintenance. The NodeZero scanner is a small Linux wrapper with scripts that need occasional package updates. Although it auto-updates before scans, it's safer to manually update dependencies beforehand to prevent issues during testing.

Overall, I think The NodeZero Platform is a necessity in any security portfolio. With 15 years in the industry, I see it as an essential tool for organizations of any size to determine whether vulnerabilities are truly exploitable. The product works well, is stable, and provides unique validation capabilities. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 for everything.

I am a customer of The NodeZero Platform.