Manual pentest
One bespoke document, written by the consulting team, dated at engagement end. No machine-readable evidence; mapping to the customer framework is done by hand.
Five approaches to LLM security risk, compared.
LLM risk is treated by four common approaches and one specialist platform. The matrix below maps each against five axes that matter to a procurement review: time to evidence, framework mapping, continuity, auditor export, and prompt privacy.
Approach
Time to evidence
Framework mapping
Continuous?
Auditor export
Prompt privacy
Manual annual pentest
Months
Manual write-up
No
Bespoke document
Prompts shared with the consultancy
How Penaxtra differs: continuous scheduled scans replace the engagement cadence; evidence is regenerated nightly with the same control identifiers your auditor already accepts.
Single-judge LLM scanner
Days
Partial (one or two frameworks)
Yes
JSON only
Prompts sent to the scanner vendor
How Penaxtra differs: three independent LLM judges (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) plus a meta-judge eliminate single-model bias; six frameworks ship pre-mapped at the control-ID level.
Guardrail-only inline gateway
Real-time block
Limited
Yes
None (block log only)
Prompts inspected, no audit trail
How Penaxtra differs: the runtime gateway emits a stable forty-plus-code reason taxonomy and a tamper-evident audit log; the same control plane also runs adversarial scans, so blocks turn into findings instead of disappearing into logs.
Compliance spreadsheet
Quarterly
Manual
No
Spreadsheet
Not applicable
How Penaxtra differs: cross-framework overlaps are pre-computed; one finding feeds twenty-two curated similarity pairs across six standards so the spreadsheet maintains itself.
Penaxtra
Hours
Six frameworks, twenty-two overlaps
Daily or weekly cron
PDF plus JSON, control-IDs
On-prem gateway: 0 prompt bytes egress
Buyers comparing approaches usually have one already in flight. The most common combination we see in pilot deployments is "manual annual pentest plus a compliance spreadsheet"; the most expensive failure mode is "guardrail-only inline gateway with no audit trail" because the block log is not control-mapped evidence.
OWASP LLM Top 10 coverage by approach.
OWASP LLM
Manual pentest
Single-judge scanner
Guardrail gateway
Penaxtra
LLM01 Prompt injectionPartial
Yes
Partial (block only)
Yes, mapped to ATLAS AML.T0051
LLM02 Insecure output handlingPartial
Partial
Yes
Yes, with response normalization
LLM03 Training data poisoningNo
No
No
Yes, via local model scanner
LLM04 Denial of serviceNo
Partial
Yes (rate limit)
Yes, per-domain budget + rate limit
LLM05 Supply chainNo
No
No
Yes, via known-bad SHA-256 feed
LLM06 Sensitive disclosurePartial
Yes
Yes
Yes, 48 DLP patterns
LLM07 Insecure plugin designManual review
Partial
No
Yes, MCP server inventory + tool flags
LLM08 Excessive agencyNo
Partial
No
Yes, attack-path enumeration
LLM09 OverrelianceManual
Partial
No
Yes, judge confidence threshold
LLM10 Model theftNo
No
No
Partial (egress DLP + rate limit)
Thirty-one capabilities at a glance.
Six categories every engineering + GRC review covers: asset discovery, adversarial testing, runtime gating, compliance + evidence, audit + reporting, privacy + deployment. Cells use stable language - planned features are flagged as planned, not as ship today.
Capability
Manual pentest
Single-judge scanner
Guardrail gateway
Compliance spreadsheet
Penaxtra
Asset discovery
LLM endpoint inventory
No
No
Partial (traffic only)
Manual list
Yes, schema-versioned
Tool / MCP server registry
No
No
No
No
Yes, tool args inspected
Vector database catalog
No
No
No
Manual list
Yes, with embedding model link
Embedding + fine-tuned + self-hosted models
No
No
No
Manual list
Yes, separate catalogs each
RAG pipeline + data source mapping
No
Partial (probes only)
No
No
Yes, source-to-index graph
Adversarial testing
Direct prompt-injection probes
Manual, ad-hoc
Yes
Block only, no audit
No
Yes, 14 seeded families
Indirect / RAG injection probes
Manual
Partial
No
No
Yes, RAG corpus tainting
Tool-chain poisoning detection
No
No
No
No
Yes, multi-turn correlation
Multi-judge consensus methodology
Single auditor
Single model
N/A
N/A
3 judges + meta
Probe library extensibility
N/A
Closed catalog
N/A
N/A
YAML, customer-authored
Runtime gating
Inline DLP firewall
No
No
Yes
No
Yes, 48 patterns
Tool allowlist enforcement
No
No
Partial
No
Yes, per-asset scoped
Six-pass normalization pipeline
No
No
Regex-only
No
Unicode, leet, zero-width, base64
Ed25519-signed policy distribution
No
No
No
No
Yes, blob versioning
Per-domain budget + rate limit
No
No
Partial
No
Yes, daily + monthly caps
Sub-millisecond filter overhead
N/A
N/A
Vendor claims vary
N/A
P99 < 0.8 ms
Compliance + evidence
OWASP LLM Top 10 (2025) mapping
Hand-written
Yes
Partial
Manual cell entries
Yes, control-ID level
OWASP Agentic Top 10 (2026) mapping
No
No
No
No
Yes, ASI01-ASI10
NIST AI 600-1 + 800-218A mapping
No
Partial
No
Manual cells
Yes, GOVERN+MAP+MEASURE+MANAGE
MITRE ATLAS mapping
No
Partial
No
No
Yes, technique IDs
EU AI Act high-risk provider obligations
Counsel-driven
No
No
Manual cells
Yes, Annex III articles
ISO/IEC 42001 Annex A mapping
No
No
No
Manual cells
Yes, 38 control objectives
Audit + reporting
Append-only audit log
No
Vendor SaaS log
Block log only
No
Yes, tamper-evident mirror
PDF auditor export
Bespoke doc
No
No
Yes
Yes, signed PDF + ledger
Machine-readable JSON export
No
Yes
No
No
Yes, schema-versioned
Cross-framework deduplication
No
No
No
Manual rules
22 curated overlaps
Privacy + deployment
Prompt content stays in customer VPC
Shared with consultant
Sent to scanner SaaS
Vendor inspects
N/A
Self-hosted agent option
Self-hosted runtime gateway
N/A
No
Some vendors
N/A
Yes, Linux + Windows
Row-level security on tenant data
N/A
Vendor-managed
N/A
N/A
Database row-level isolation + tamper-evident audit mirror
Sealed-box secret storage
N/A
Vendor KMS
N/A
N/A
X25519 sealed-box AEAD
Data residency disclosure
Consultancy office
Vendor-managed
Vendor-managed
N/A
EU, publicly mapped
Honesty notes: ISO/IEC 27001 is certified and active. SOC 2 Type II is planned. SSO / SAML, on-prem control plane, multi-region data plane, and SARIF export are not yet shipped; they are on the public roadmap. The matrix above reflects the production platform shipping to enrolled customers today.
What an auditor sees on day one.
Single-judge scanner
JSON findings with severity, often unmapped to control IDs. The auditor receives a list of probes; the customer maps findings to controls themselves.
Guardrail gateway
A block log, time-stamped. Not evidence: the auditor cannot tell which control a block satisfies, and the inline action prevents the underlying finding from ever entering an audit register.
Penaxtra
PDF report plus JSON export, pre-mapped to OWASP LLM Top 10, OWASP Agentic, NIST AI 600-1, MITRE ATLAS, EU AI Act, and ISO 42001 Annex A. Twenty-two curated cross-framework overlaps so one row satisfies multiple audit cells. Append-only audit log with tamper-evident database mirror.
Penaxtra is an enterprise AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) platform positioned as one of several approaches buyers can pick: manual penetration testing, single-judge LLM scanners, guardrail-only inline gateways, compliance spreadsheets with consulting, or an AI module bundled into a broader CNAPP. The category Penaxtra fits is documented at the AI-SPM platform page.
Deep-dive comparisons by category.
The matrix above is the overview. Each page below is a written deep-dive into one comparison: where the two approaches overlap, where the gap sits, and how to tell them apart in an evaluation.
AI-SPM vs CSPM
AI-SPM vs DSPM
AI-SPM vs LLM guardrails
AI-SPM vs manual penetration testing
AI-SPM vs AI governance platform
AI-SPM vs ASPM
AI-SPM vs CNAPP
AI-SPM vs single-judge scanner
AI-SPM vs manual LLM pentest
Two guides for the evaluation.
If you are running a selection process or preparing for an audit, start here.
See the comparison on your stack.
Request a demo for a scoped workspace review, or book an architecture review with our security team.