Claroty vs Dragos vs Nozomi: 5,000 PLCs at Risk [2026]

Iranian-linked hackers spent the spring and summer of 2026 proving a point security vendors had been making for years: the programmable logic controller, not the laptop, is now the most contested device on a corporate network. A joint CISA, FBI, NSA, DOE and EPA advisory issued April 7, 2026 and updated July 22, 2026 confirmed that Iran-affiliated actors had compromised more than 75 core automation devices at U.S. water, energy and government facilities since 2023, manipulating HMI and SCADA displays and disrupting operations at Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric and Siemens controllers. By August 19, 2026, Reuters was reporting fresh, suspected Iran-linked incidents hitting local water systems in multiple U.S. states. Data from Censys cited by Cybersecurity Dive put the exposure at more than 5,000 vulnerable industrial control devices worldwide, roughly 3,900 of them inside the United States.

That threat backdrop is why three companies keep showing up in the same procurement conversations: Claroty, Dragos, and Nozomi Networks. All three sell operational technology (OT) and industrial control system (ICS) security platforms built to see, and defend, the PLCs, RTUs and HMIs that IT-focused tools like CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender were never designed to monitor. This guide compares their current 2026 platforms, pricing models, deployment options, and the sectors where each one tends to win, using only verified vendor announcements, government advisories, and market research published in 2025 and 2026.

Why OT Security Became a 2026 Boardroom Priority

OT security spent most of the last decade as a line item buried inside plant engineering budgets. That changed once nation-state actors started treating PLCs as a primary target rather than a stepping stone. Unit 42, Palo Alto Networks’ threat intelligence arm, documented a cluster it tracks as CL-STA-1128 (also known as Cyber Av3ngers or Storm-0784) actively targeting Rockwell Automation OT/ICS equipment in an advisory updated April 17, 2026. Baker Botts’ legal analysis, published March 23, 2026, counted more than sixty Iranian-aligned cyber groups running denial-of-service campaigns, ICS reconnaissance, destructive malware and credential-harvesting operations against U.S. and allied critical infrastructure.

The financial numbers moved just as fast. MarketsAndMarkets pegs the global operational technology security market at $23.54 billion in 2025, rising to $27.39 billion in 2026, a roughly 16% year-over-year jump. ABI Research’s longer-range figures, cited by Analysis Atlas in July 2026, put the market at $12.75 billion in 2023 with a trajectory toward $21.6 billion by 2028. Read together, the two data sets tell a consistent story: OT security spending is compounding in the low-to-mid teens annually, and the acceleration tracks almost exactly with the wave of PLC-targeting advisories CISA issued between April and August 2026.

This site covered one concrete outcome of that pressure in our report on Iran-linked hackers shutting down a UK power plant for four days. The Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks platforms compared below exist specifically to prevent that scenario, or shorten it from four days to four hours.

Regulatory Pressure Adding to the 2026 OT Security Budget Case

The Iran-linked PLC campaign is not the only force pushing OT security budgets upward in 2026. Power utilities in North America already operate under NERC CIP (Critical Infrastructure Protection) standards that mandate asset inventory, access control and incident reporting for bulk electric system assets, and the 2026 wave of PLC-targeting advisories has made auditors far less tolerant of gaps in that inventory. Pipeline operators face TSA security directives with similar asset-visibility requirements following earlier ransomware incidents in the sector, while operators with European exposure are absorbing the EU’s NIS2 directive, which extends mandatory cybersecurity risk management and incident reporting to a much broader set of “essential” and “important” entities than its predecessor, including water, energy, health and manufacturing operators.

None of these frameworks names Claroty, Dragos, or Nozomi Networks specifically, but all three vendors market their platforms as compliance accelerators, since passive asset discovery and vulnerability-to-asset mapping map directly onto the audit evidence NERC CIP, TSA directives and NIS2 all require. For a compliance-driven buyer, the practical question is less “which platform detects more” and more “which platform’s reporting output slots most cleanly into our existing audit and evidence-collection process,” which is another reason a proof-of-concept against your real environment matters more than a feature checklist here.

Claroty vs Dragos vs Nozomi Networks at a Glance

Before the deep dives, here is the short version. Claroty is the broadest player, extending beyond classic ICS into cyber-physical systems (CPS) that span industrial, healthcare and enterprise IoT, and it just closed a $150 million Series F round on January 22, 2026 to fund that expansion. Dragos stays narrowly focused on industrial threat intelligence and incident response, leaning on its WorldView subscription and deep bench of ICS-specific researchers. Nozomi Networks competes on scale and cloud-native analytics, with its Guardian sensors and Vantage cloud platform built for operators running dozens or hundreds of geographically distributed sites.

All three overlap heavily on the fundamentals: passive network monitoring for asset discovery, protocol parsing for industrial traffic (Modbus, DNP3, Profinet, and similar), anomaly-based threat detection, and vulnerability mapping against known ICS advisories. Where they diverge is go-to-market focus, ecosystem depth, and how much of the platform lives in the cloud versus on an appliance sitting inside your OT network.

What Is OT/ICS Security, and How Does It Differ From IT Security?

OT security protects the physical processes a network controls, not just the data flowing through it. A compromised database leaks records; a compromised PLC can open a valve, overheat a turbine, or shut off water treatment chemical dosing. That difference drives three practical constraints that separate OT security tooling from a standard EDR or XDR stack.

Passive monitoring by default. Actively scanning a PLC the way a vulnerability scanner probes a server can crash the controller and halt physical production, so OT platforms typically listen to network traffic (via a SPAN port or network tap) rather than send probing packets.
Legacy protocols with no built-in authentication. Modbus, DNP3, and many Profinet and Siemens S7 implementations were designed in the 1980s and 1990s with zero concept of encryption or identity, so detection has to happen at the network layer rather than relying on endpoint agents.
Uptime beats patching. A hospital or water utility cannot take a control system offline for a Tuesday patch cycle the way an IT team might. OT platforms compensate with virtual patching, compensating controls, and detailed vulnerability-to-asset mapping instead of forced remediation.

The July 22, 2026 CISA advisory update on Iranian-affiliated PLC exploitation is a textbook illustration: attackers used vendor engineering software and default or reused credentials, not zero-day exploits, to reach internet-facing Rockwell, Schneider Electric and Siemens controllers. That is precisely the exposure Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks are built to close.

Claroty xDome, CTD, and the CPS Library: Platform Deep Dive

Claroty’s current lineup runs on three pillars. Claroty xDome is the cloud-delivered SaaS platform for asset discovery, risk scoring and continuous monitoring across OT, IoT and broader cyber-physical systems. Claroty CTD (Continuous Threat Detection) is the on-premises, appliance-based counterpart for OT networks that need local sensors feeding cloud analytics. Claroty Secure Remote Access (SRA) governs how third-party vendors and maintenance contractors connect into OT environments, a control point that matters given how many 2026 ICS incidents traced back to exposed remote access paths.

The company’s biggest 2026 move landed January 22, when it announced a $150 million Series F round explicitly earmarked for “securing the world’s mission-critical infrastructure.” The same announcement introduced the CPS Library, described by Claroty as a first-of-its-kind AI-powered asset catalog built in direct partnership with Schneider Electric and Rockwell Automation. The pitch is straightforward: instead of a generic device fingerprint, the CPS Library aims to identify exact asset specifications, firmware versions, and manufacturer-published vulnerability data automatically, closing the manual research gap that slows down OT asset inventories today. The same release named Gil Gur Arie as Claroty’s first AI Chief, signaling the company plans to keep pushing AI-assisted asset intelligence as its core differentiator through the rest of 2026.

Claroty’s positioning has also broadened past traditional industrial plants. The company increasingly frames itself around “cyber-physical systems” generally, which pulls in healthcare technology (connected medical devices) and building management systems alongside classic ICS, a wider net than either Dragos or Nozomi Networks currently casts publicly.

Dragos Platform: Threat Intelligence-First OT Security

Dragos built its reputation on industrial threat intelligence rather than general-purpose monitoring, and that focus still defines the product. The Dragos Platform handles OT network monitoring, asset visibility and threat detection, but its differentiator is how tightly that detection ties back to Dragos WorldView, a subscription threat intelligence feed built specifically around ICS-targeting adversary groups. When Unit 42 or CISA names a new cluster like CL-STA-1128, Dragos customers get that context mapped directly onto their own asset inventory and detection rules rather than a generic advisory to interpret manually.

Dragos also leans harder into services than its two rivals, with dedicated incident response, threat hunting, and architecture assessment engagements sold alongside the platform. That combination, deep threat intelligence plus hands-on IR, is why Dragos shows up disproportionately often in post-incident forensics work for power, oil and gas, and manufacturing operators, the same sectors named repeatedly in the 2026 CISA advisories on Iranian PLC targeting.

Unlike Claroty’s January 2026 funding announcement, no new Dragos funding round or major platform rebrand surfaced in verifiable 2025-2026 reporting at the time of writing, suggesting the company is running on its existing capital base while it competes primarily on intelligence depth rather than new SKUs.

Nozomi Networks Guardian and Vantage: Platform Deep Dive

Nozomi Networks splits its product line the same way Claroty does: Guardian is the on-premises sensor and appliance line that sits inside OT and IoT network segments capturing traffic, and Vantage is the cloud-native analytics layer that aggregates data across every deployed Guardian sensor into a single dashboard. That architecture is built for scale first. Operators running dozens or hundreds of geographically dispersed sites, think regional utilities, ports, or multi-site manufacturers, tend to favor Nozomi because Vantage was designed from the ground up to normalize and correlate telemetry across a large, distributed sensor fleet rather than a handful of appliances at one plant.

Nozomi also markets itself heavily on integration breadth into existing security operations centers, positioning Guardian and Vantage as data sources that plug into a customer’s existing SIEM and SOAR stack rather than trying to replace it. That “OT visibility layer for your existing SOC” pitch tends to resonate with security teams who already run Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or a similar platform for IT and want OT telemetry folded into the same workflow instead of standing up a second, siloed console.

Claroty vs Dragos vs Nozomi Networks: Full Specs Comparison

The table below lines up the three platforms across the criteria that actually drive OT security purchasing decisions in 2026.

Criteria	Claroty	Dragos	Nozomi Networks
Flagship platform(s)	xDome (SaaS), CTD (on-prem)	Dragos Platform	Guardian (on-prem), Vantage (cloud)
Primary architecture	Hybrid (cloud xDome + on-prem sensors)	Mostly on-prem, cloud-hosted intel	Hybrid (Guardian sensors + Vantage cloud)
Asset discovery method	Passive network monitoring + AI-assisted CPS Library	Passive network monitoring, protocol parsing	Passive network monitoring, protocol parsing
2026 flagship AI feature	CPS Library (AI-powered asset catalog, Jan 2026)	No new AI-branded module publicly confirmed for 2026	No new AI-branded module publicly confirmed for 2026
Threat intelligence offering	Integrated into xDome/CTD risk scoring	Dragos WorldView (standalone subscription)	Integrated analytics, no standalone named intel product
Secure remote access module	Claroty SRA (dedicated product)	Not a core standalone product line	Not a core standalone product line
Incident response / managed services	Available via partners and services	Dedicated in-house IR, threat hunting, assessments	Available via partners and services
2025-2026 funding milestone	$150M Series F (Jan 22, 2026)	No new round confirmed in 2025-2026 reporting	No new round confirmed in 2025-2026 reporting
Named 2026 OEM partnerships	Schneider Electric, Rockwell Automation	None publicly named for 2026	None publicly named for 2026
Scope beyond classic OT	Broadest: OT, IoT, healthcare/CPS, building systems	Narrowest: focused on industrial/ICS	OT and IoT, industrial focus
Best-fit deployment scale	Regulated, multi-sector CPS environments	Single to mid-size industrial sites needing deep intel	Large, geographically distributed multi-site fleets
SIEM/SOAR integration posture	Strong, positioned as full-stack platform	Strong, intel-led integrations into SOC workflows	Strongest marketed integration breadth

Pricing and Total Cost of Ownership Compared

None of the three vendors publishes list pricing, which is standard practice across the OT security category. All three sell on a quote basis, with cost driven by the number of monitored sites, discovered assets or sensors, traffic volume, and which modules (threat detection, risk management, remote access, managed services) a customer bundles in. Based on general enterprise OT security market practice rather than a single vendor’s disclosed number, deals for sizeable industrial operators commonly land in the low-to-mid six-figure annual range, and multi-site rollouts that add managed services or incident response retainers can reach high six or low seven figures in total contract value.

Vendor	Pricing model	What drives cost	Typical buyer profile
Claroty	Quote-based, modular (xDome, CTD, SRA sold separately or bundled)	Number of sites, assets monitored, CPS scope, SRA seat count	Multi-sector enterprises wanting one platform across industrial, IoT and healthcare CPS
Dragos	Quote-based, platform + services retainer	Site count, WorldView intel tier, IR/threat hunting hours	Critical infrastructure operators prioritizing threat intelligence and incident response
Nozomi Networks	Quote-based, sensor + Vantage subscription	Number of Guardian sensors, Vantage data volume, site count	Large distributed operators (utilities, transportation, multi-site manufacturing)

The practical takeaway for budget planning: expect a proof-of-concept at a single site before any of the three will quote a full enterprise rollout, and expect the final number to hinge far more on how many sites and assets you need covered than on which vendor’s logo is on the contract.

Detection Benchmarks and Analyst Recognition

OT security doesn’t have a standardized, third-party benchmark suite the way endpoint detection does with MITRE ATT&CK evaluations, but three independent data points give a reasonable read on where these vendors stand in 2026.

Market research positioning. MarketsAndMarkets’ 2026 OT security market report and ABI Research’s figures (via Analysis Atlas, July 2026) both treat Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks as established, top-tier vendors in a market that grew roughly 16% year-over-year into 2026, evidence all three are scaling with, not lagging, category demand.
Analyst rankings coverage. Industry press including Information Security Media Group’s BankInfoSecurity has published 2026 rankings naming Claroty and Nozomi Networks among the top cyber-physical security vendors, with Armis also frequently cited in the same tier; Dragos is consistently placed among leading vendors for industrial threat intelligence and incident response rather than broad CPS coverage.
Threat research citation frequency. When Unit 42, CISA, or other government and vendor threat researchers publish advisories on ICS-targeting activity like CL-STA-1128, Dragos WorldView research is cited alongside government sources more often than Claroty or Nozomi research, reflecting Dragos’ narrower but deeper intelligence focus.

None of the three has published a standardized detection accuracy or false-positive rate benchmark that would let you do an apples-to-apples performance comparison, and any specific percentage you see attributed to one of these vendors in a marketing datasheet should be treated as a vendor-supplied claim rather than an independently verified result. A proof-of-concept against your own traffic is still the only reliable way to compare detection quality across all three.

Deployment Models: Cloud, On-Prem, and Hybrid

OT networks are frequently air-gapped or heavily segmented from the internet by design, which shapes how all three vendors architect deployment.

Claroty: hybrid by default

xDome is cloud-delivered SaaS, while CTD and SRA are typically deployed as on-prem appliances or virtual machines inside the OT network or DMZ. Most customers run a hybrid model: local sensors feed telemetry up to cloud-hosted analytics, which is how Claroty supports both air-gapped sites (via CTD) and centralized visibility across dozens of locations (via xDome).

Dragos: on-prem-first with cloud intelligence

The Dragos Platform historically emphasizes on-premises control, appliances physically located inside the OT network, with WorldView threat intelligence delivered from the cloud. This appeals to customers in highly regulated or classified environments who need local data residency but still want external threat context.

Nozomi Networks: sensor-plus-cloud at scale

Guardian sensors sit on-prem, at the network tap or SPAN port level, while Vantage runs as a cloud-native SaaS layer that aggregates every deployed sensor into one view. This is the same fundamental hybrid pattern as Claroty, but Nozomi’s architecture is explicitly optimized for high sensor counts across many physically separate sites.

A generic, illustrative segmentation policy that any of these platforms might help enforce, based on the ISA/IEC 62443 zone-and-conduit model, looks roughly like this:

zone: level_1_control
  assets: [PLC, RTU, HMI]
  allowed_inbound: [level_2_supervisory]
  allowed_outbound: [level_2_supervisory]
  internet_access: denied

zone: level_2_supervisory
  assets: [SCADA_server, engineering_workstation]
  allowed_inbound: [level_1_control, level_3_operations]
  internet_access: denied_except_patch_proxy

zone: level_3_operations
  assets: [historian, MES]
  allowed_inbound: [level_2_supervisory, corporate_DMZ]
  internet_access: proxied_only

Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks each generate the asset inventory and traffic mapping needed to design and validate a policy like this; none of them enforces segmentation directly, that job stays with your firewalls, switches, and NAC infrastructure.

Integration Ecosystem: SIEM, XDR, and SOAR Compatibility

None of these three platforms is meant to be a standalone SOC. All three are built to forward OT telemetry into whatever IT security stack a customer already runs. Common integration points across the category include Splunk and IBM QRadar for log aggregation, Microsoft Sentinel as a cloud-native SIEM, CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender for cross-referencing IT-side EDR alerts, ServiceNow and SOAR platforms like Palo Alto Cortex XSOAR for ticketing and playbook automation, and major firewall vendors including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Check Point for enforcing the segmentation the OT platform recommends.

Claroty’s January 2026 announcement adds a distinct layer here: its partnerships with Schneider Electric and Rockwell Automation go deeper than typical SIEM plumbing, feeding vendor-specific asset and firmware data directly into the CPS Library. That is a meaningfully different kind of integration than “forward alerts to Splunk,” and it is currently unique to Claroty among the three. If your environment already runs heavily on Schneider or Rockwell hardware, that OEM-level integration is worth weighing against Dragos’ deeper threat-intel tie-ins or Nozomi’s broader SIEM/SOAR marketing.

How Claroty, Dragos, and Nozomi Networks Compare to the Rest of the Market

Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks are the three names that come up most often in OT-specific procurement, but they are not the only vendors circling this budget. Armis has expanded aggressively from enterprise IoT into cyber-physical systems and is frequently named in the same analyst roundups as Claroty and Nozomi Networks, including the BankInfoSecurity 2026 rankings referenced above. Microsoft Defender for IoT gives organizations already standardized on the Microsoft security stack a lower-friction, if less specialized, option for basic OT asset visibility. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XDR platform, covered in more depth in our Palo Alto vs Fortinet vs Check Point comparison, increasingly folds OT telemetry into its broader XDR story rather than treating it as a standalone product line.

The distinction that matters for buyers: Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks are OT-native companies whose entire product roadmap is built around industrial protocols and control-system threat models. Armis and Microsoft approach the same problem from an IT-asset-management or general XDR starting point and have extended into OT more recently. For an environment where classic ICS risk (PLCs, RTUs, SCADA, safety instrumented systems) is the primary concern, the three OT-native vendors compared in this guide typically offer deeper protocol coverage and more mature ICS-specific detection content than the IT-first alternatives, even where the IT-first tools offer a lower-friction path to a single-pane-of-glass view for a security team already standardized on that vendor’s broader platform.

Real-World Use Cases and Deployment Examples

The scenarios below reflect the sector patterns named directly in 2026 government advisories and vendor positioning, illustrating where each platform’s strengths typically get tested in production.

Municipal water utility hardening after the July 2026 CISA advisory. Water and wastewater systems were explicitly named alongside energy and government facilities in the CISA/FBI/NSA advisory on Iranian-affiliated PLC exploitation. A utility in this position typically needs fast, low-friction asset discovery across legacy SCADA gear, favoring whichever platform its existing engineering staff can deploy with the least on-site tuning.
Regional power utility responding to PLC-targeting activity. The same threat pattern this site documented in Iran-linked hackers shutting down a UK power plant for four days is the exact scenario Dragos WorldView threat intelligence is built to contextualize, mapping known nation-state ICS techniques directly onto a utility’s own detected assets.
Multi-site manufacturer standardizing on Rockwell and Schneider hardware. A manufacturer running dozens of plants on Rockwell Automation and Schneider Electric equipment is a direct match for Claroty’s CPS Library partnerships, which promise more accurate asset specification data for exactly those two vendors’ equipment.
Global oil and gas operator with dozens of remote sites. Distributed operators with limited on-site IT staff at each location lean toward architectures like Nozomi’s Guardian-plus-Vantage model, where local sensors need minimal maintenance and most analysis happens centrally in the cloud.
Hospital system securing connected medical devices. Claroty’s expansion of its platform framing from pure ICS into broader cyber-physical systems (CPS) is aimed squarely at this use case, treating infusion pumps and imaging equipment with the same asset-visibility approach as a plant’s PLCs.
Security operations center consolidating OT and IT alerts. A SOC that already standardized on Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel for IT telemetry typically prioritizes whichever OT vendor offers the cleanest, most pre-built integration so OT alerts show up in the same triage queue analysts already work from.

Who Should Choose Which OT Security Platform

Based on the platform differences above, here is how the buying decision tends to shake out by organizational profile.

Choose Claroty if you operate across multiple cyber-physical domains (industrial plus healthcare or building systems), or if your environment is heavily built on Schneider Electric and Rockwell Automation hardware and you want to take advantage of the CPS Library’s OEM-level asset data.
Choose Dragos if your top priority is nation-state and ransomware threat intelligence specific to ICS, and you want in-house incident response and threat hunting services bundled with the platform rather than sourced from a third party.
Choose Nozomi Networks if you operate dozens or hundreds of geographically distributed sites and need a sensor architecture that scales cleanly, plus the broadest out-of-the-box SIEM/SOAR integration story of the three.
Choose based on existing SOC tooling when your organization already has a mature, non-negotiable SIEM or XDR stack; whichever vendor demonstrates the cleanest live integration during a proof-of-concept should outweigh feature checklists.
Run a competitive proof-of-concept regardless of vendor if your budget allows it. Given that none of the three publishes independently verified detection benchmarks, a 30-60 day POC against your own OT traffic remains the most reliable way to compare real-world detection accuracy and false-positive rates.

How to Migrate to or Add an OT Security Platform

Whether you are deploying your first OT security platform or replacing an incumbent, the rollout sequence looks similar across Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks. Here is the general path most industrial security teams follow.

Inventory your OT/ICS network segments and identify every SPAN port, network tap, or mirrored switch port available for passive monitoring.
Confirm which industrial protocols are in use at each site (Modbus, DNP3, Profinet, S7 and similar) so the vendor can validate protocol parsing coverage before you sign.
Request a proof-of-concept scoped to one representative site rather than a lab demo, since real OT traffic surfaces integration issues a sandbox environment will not.
Deploy passive sensors or appliances at the chosen site’s network taps; no active scanning should touch live PLCs during this phase.
Let the platform build a baseline of normal traffic for at least two to four weeks before tuning alert thresholds, since industrial processes often have cyclical patterns that look anomalous on day one.
Map discovered assets against the platform’s vulnerability and CVE database to prioritize which legacy devices carry the highest real-world risk.
Configure secure remote access controls for any vendors or contractors who connect into the OT network for maintenance.
Integrate the platform’s alerting into your existing SIEM or SOAR (Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, or equivalent) so OT alerts reach the same analysts already triaging IT alerts.
Use the baseline period’s output to design or validate network segmentation zones, following an ISA/IEC 62443-style model.
Expand the rollout site by site rather than all at once, applying lessons from the pilot site’s tuning to each subsequent location.
Cross-train OT engineering staff and SOC analysts together, since effective triage requires both network security context and process/engineering context.
Establish an ongoing review cadence tied to new government advisories (CISA, FBI, Unit 42) so newly disclosed ICS threat activity gets mapped against your asset inventory as soon as it’s published.

Pros and Cons of Each Platform

Claroty

Pros: broadest scope across OT, IoT and cyber-physical systems; deepest OEM-level integrations via the CPS Library partnerships with Schneider Electric and Rockwell Automation; dedicated secure remote access product; freshly capitalized with a $150 million Series F to fund continued AI investment.

Cons: broader scope can mean a steeper initial deployment scope if you only need classic ICS monitoring; the CPS Library’s OEM data advantage is currently strongest for Schneider and Rockwell equipment specifically, less differentiated for other manufacturers.

Dragos

Pros: deepest ICS-specific threat intelligence of the three via WorldView; in-house incident response and threat hunting services rather than third-party referrals; strong reputation among government and critical infrastructure customers for nation-state threat context.

Cons: narrower product scope than Claroty or Nozomi, staying focused on classic industrial environments rather than broader cyber-physical systems; no confirmed new funding round or major platform expansion surfaced in 2025-2026 reporting, suggesting slower headline product velocity than Claroty.

Nozomi Networks

Pros: architecture built for scale across many distributed sites; strong marketed integration breadth into existing SIEM and SOAR stacks; cloud-native Vantage analytics reduce the operational burden of managing dozens of separate on-prem consoles.

Cons: no dedicated secure remote access product to match Claroty SRA; threat intelligence is integrated into the platform rather than sold and marketed as a standalone research product the way Dragos WorldView is; like Dragos, no confirmed new 2025-2026 funding round or major rebrand.

The Verdict: Which OT Security Platform Should You Choose?

There is no single winner across all three platforms in 2026, and any vendor telling you otherwise is selling, not comparing. The data points that matter most: OT security spending is growing roughly 16% year-over-year into a $27.39 billion 2026 market per MarketsAndMarkets, driven directly by the wave of Iranian-affiliated PLC attacks CISA tracked from April through August 2026 across water, energy and government sectors. Against that backdrop, Claroty’s $150 million Series F and CPS Library give it the strongest 2026 product momentum and the broadest cyber-physical scope, making it the default pick for multi-sector enterprises standardized on Schneider Electric or Rockwell Automation hardware. Dragos remains the pick when threat intelligence depth and in-house incident response matter more than platform breadth, particularly for power, oil and gas, and other sectors named directly in nation-state advisories. Nozomi Networks wins on architecture for operators who need to scale a sensor fleet across dozens of physically separate sites without multiplying operational overhead.

Since none of the three vendors publishes independently verified detection benchmarks or public pricing, the responsible way to make this decision is still a scoped proof-of-concept against your own OT traffic, evaluated against the specific criteria in the comparison table above rather than marketing claims alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OT security and how is it different from IT security?

OT security protects operational technology, the PLCs, RTUs, HMIs and SCADA systems that control physical processes like power generation or water treatment, as opposed to IT security, which protects data and general-purpose computing systems. OT platforms rely on passive network monitoring rather than active scanning because probing legacy industrial protocols can crash a controller and halt production.

Is Claroty, Dragos, or Nozomi Networks the best OT security platform in 2026?

There is no single best platform; each targets a different buyer. Claroty offers the broadest cyber-physical systems scope and the deepest 2026 OEM partnerships, Dragos offers the deepest ICS-specific threat intelligence and in-house incident response, and Nozomi Networks offers the strongest architecture for scaling across many distributed sites.

How much does OT/ICS security software cost?

None of the three vendors publishes list pricing. All sell on a quote basis driven by site count, number of monitored assets, and which modules you bundle. Based on general enterprise OT security market practice, sizeable industrial deployments commonly fall in the low-to-mid six-figure annual range, with large multi-site rollouts that include managed services reaching high six or low seven figures in total contract value.

Can these platforms stop a live attack on a PLC?

Claroty, Dragos and Nozomi Networks are primarily detection and visibility platforms, not inline blocking tools. They identify anomalous or malicious activity targeting OT assets and alert your security team, but actual blocking or segmentation enforcement typically happens through your firewalls, switches, or network access control systems acting on the platform’s recommendations.

Do I need OT security if my systems are air-gapped?

Yes. The CISA advisories issued throughout 2026 documented Iranian-affiliated actors reaching PLCs that were assumed to be isolated but turned out to be internet-facing due to misconfiguration or unmanaged remote access paths. Air-gapping is a goal, not a guaranteed state, which is exactly why passive OT monitoring exists to verify it continuously rather than assume it.

What triggered the surge in OT security demand in 2026?

A sustained campaign of Iranian-affiliated attacks against U.S. and allied critical infrastructure, formally documented in CISA advisories from April 7, 2026 through the July 22, 2026 update and continuing incidents reported by Reuters in August 2026, targeted PLCs from Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric and Siemens across water, energy and government sectors. That sustained activity is the primary driver behind the OT security market’s roughly 16% year-over-year growth into 2026.

Can Claroty, Dragos, and Nozomi Networks integrate with my existing SIEM or XDR stack?

Yes, all three are built to forward OT telemetry into standard SIEM and SOAR platforms, commonly Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, IBM QRadar, and ServiceNow, and to cross-reference alerts with IT-side EDR/XDR tools like CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender. Nozomi Networks markets the broadest out-of-the-box integration story of the three.

Which OT security vendor has the strongest threat intelligence?

Dragos is most frequently cited alongside government and independent threat research (such as Unit 42’s coverage of the CL-STA-1128 cluster) due to its dedicated WorldView intelligence subscription built specifically around ICS-targeting adversary groups. Claroty and Nozomi Networks integrate threat context into their platforms but do not market a standalone research product at the same depth.

Do these platforms cover healthcare and building management systems, or only industrial plants?

Claroty is the clearest fit for coverage beyond classic industrial plants, having broadened its platform framing to cover cyber-physical systems generally, which includes connected medical devices and building management systems alongside traditional ICS. Dragos and Nozomi Networks remain more tightly focused on industrial and IoT environments.

Related Coverage

Sources: Claroty Series F announcement, Unit 42 threat brief on Iran-linked cyberattacks, MarketsAndMarkets OT security market report, TechCrunch on Iran-linked disruption of water and energy providers, The Register on expanded CISA industrial kit warnings, Cybersecurity Dive on 5,000 exposed industrial control devices, Analysis Atlas / ABI Research OT/ICS market data, and Cybersecurity News on Iran-linked Rockwell PLC exploitation.