Acronis vs Picus Security

Acronis is a Swiss-headquartered cyber protection company founded in 2003, known for its True Image disk imaging software and, today, mainly for a multitenant platform that managed service providers use to back up, secure and manage their clients' systems. EQT agreed in 2024 to take a majority stake, and Acronis says more than 20,000 service providers and 750,000 businesses use its platform.

The business offering, marketed as the Acronis Cyber Platform and sold to service providers as Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, combines backup of servers, PCs, VMs and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace with disaster recovery, EDR and MDR, email security, data loss prevention, patching, RMM and PSA-style billing and service desk tools. MSPs pay per workload for actual usage; IT departments buy one to three year terms. The consumer line, Acronis True Image, is sold per year: Essentials for local backup and cloning, Advanced with cloud storage and anti-malware, and Premium with 1 TB or more of cloud storage.

Acronis fits MSPs that want one console for backup, security and RMM, and home or small-office users who need full-disk images and cloning. Backblaze is simpler and cheaper for plain cloud backup, Afi.ai focuses on SaaS backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Veeam is the usual choice for large virtualized data centers.

Buying tip: True Image prices rise with each extra computer and terabyte, so a 3 or 5 computer pack is better value for households. MSPs should check which security modules they already license elsewhere.

Picus Security is a cybersecurity company founded in Ankara, Turkey, in 2013 that now operates globally with headquarters in San Francisco. It pioneered breach and attack simulation (BAS), a category that tests whether an organization's security controls actually stop real attacks, and is regularly cited among the leaders of the security validation market.

The Picus Security Validation Platform safely simulates thousands of attack techniques, malware, ransomware and data exfiltration scenarios against firewalls, IPS, web application firewalls, email gateways, endpoint protection and SIEM. It shows which attacks were blocked, logged or missed, and supplies vendor-specific prevention signatures and detection rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK to close the gaps. Attack path validation emulates an attacker moving through Active Directory and the internal network, and detection rule validation checks SIEM rules for health and coverage. The threat library is updated as new campaigns appear. Pricing is enterprise and quote-based.

Picus fits security operations teams, red and purple teams and CISOs at mid-size and large enterprises who want continuous evidence that controls work, often as part of a continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program. It is not a vulnerability scanner or a penetration testing service, and smaller companies without dedicated security staff will struggle to act on its findings. AttackIQ, Cymulate and SafeBreach are the main BAS competitors, while Pentera focuses on automated penetration testing.