Comparisons
AI Agent Security Alternatives: Compare Vendors Side by Side
Honest, side-by-side comparisons of Agentshield against every major AI agent security vendor: what each does well, where we genuinely lose, and which one fits your stack.
Direct answer
The AI agent security market split into two shapes and then consolidated hard. Guardrail products inspect the text going into and out of a model. Control planes govern what the agent does afterwards: which tools it may call, which data it may reach, which actions pause for a human, and what is recorded. Since September 2025 most of the guardrail names have been acquired, with Lakera going to Check Point, Prompt Security to SentinelOne, Robust Intelligence into Cisco AI Defense, CalypsoAI to F5 and Aim Security to Cato Networks. Lasso Security, Zenity and Agentshield are the notable independents. Pick by the shape of your exposure first and by vendor size second.
Market map
Who owns which AI security vendor in 2026.
Ownership changes what you are actually buying, so it is worth knowing before a shortlist rather than after. Every row below is a publicly announced transaction. Verify the current position before you sign anything, because this table has needed updating roughly every quarter.
| Vendor | Status | Primary focus |
|---|---|---|
| Lakera | Acquired by Check Point, announced September 2025, reported around 300 million dollars | Prompt injection guardrails, plus pre-deployment red teaming with Lakera Red |
| Prompt Security | Acquired by SentinelOne, announced September 5, 2025. Reported consideration ranges from roughly 180 million to 250 million dollars depending on source | Guardrails for GenAI usage across employees and applications |
| Robust Intelligence | Acquired by Cisco, now sold as Cisco AI Defense | Model validation and runtime protection, organized around discover, detect and protect |
| Protect AI | Acquired by Palo Alto Networks, announced April 2025 and completed July 2025. Reported at around 700 million dollars | Model scanning, AI supply chain risk, red teaming and posture. The technology now ships inside Prisma AIRS rather than standalone |
| Prisma AIRS | Palo Alto Networks product line, version 3.0 released March 2026 | AI security posture and runtime protection inside the Palo Alto platform |
| CalypsoAI | Acquired by F5, announced September 26, 2025, reported at 145.2 million dollars | Model guardrails and adversarial testing |
| Aim Security | Acquired by Cato Networks, announced September 8, 2025 | Enterprise GenAI security and posture |
| Lasso Security | Independent, around 28 million dollars raised | Agentic and LLM runtime security, shipped Intent Deputy in February 2026 |
| Zenity | Independent. Raised a 125 million Series C led by Norwest on August 3, 2026, taking total funding to roughly 180 million | Enterprise-wide agent discovery and governance, with intent-based enforcement |
| Agentshield | Independent | Runtime control plane: injection firewall, per-agent tool and data permissions, approval gates, immutable audit trail |
Five of the nine have been absorbed into larger platforms inside twelve months. If your security estate already sits with one of those acquirers, the add-on path is often the right answer and no feature table should talk you out of it. If it does not, an independent control point avoids inheriting someone else's platform roadmap. For the wider landscape including vendors we do not compete with directly, see our writeup of AI agent security companies.
Orientation
Which vendor were you actually comparing?
People arrive on this page searching for vendors we have not written up, and quite often for vendors that do a completely different job from ours. Both are worth answering honestly, because the fastest way to waste a quarter is to run a bake-off between two products that were never solving the same problem. Here is the plain map. We sell against almost none of the companies below, which is exactly why the descriptions are worth reading.
AI security vendors in adjacent lanes
These are real AI security companies. They overlap with us at the edges and diverge at the center, usually on whether the product judges the model or governs the action.
| Vendor | What it actually does | Where it overlaps with agent runtime control |
|---|---|---|
| HiddenLayer | Model-centric security: AI discovery, model scanning, supply chain checks, attack simulation, plus guardrails and agent protection | Partial. Strongest where you import third-party model artifacts that could carry malware or backdoors, which is a problem we do not solve at all |
| Noma Security | Broad AI security posture across the lifecycle: discovery, governance, adversarial testing and detection and response for AI systems and agents | Real overlap on agent governance. Noma is wider and posture-led, we are narrower and enforcement-led at the moment of the tool call |
| WitnessAI | Enterprise AI usage visibility and governance, positioned between employees and models, with intent-based behavioral controls | Partial. Their center of gravity is what your people do with AI. Ours is what your agents do with your systems |
| Pillar Security | Unified AI security platform spanning identification, assessment and mitigation across the AI lifecycle. Also publishes strong original research on agent vulnerabilities | Real overlap on agent security. We have cited their disclosure work on this site more than once because it is good |
| Protect AI | Model scanning, AI supply chain risk, red teaming and posture. Acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2025 and now sold inside Prisma AIRS | Compare it as Prisma AIRS rather than as a standalone product. See our Prisma AIRS comparison |
| ActiveFence | Trust and safety at scale: harmful content detection and moderation for platforms and foundation models, extended into AI safety | Little. Content harm and abuse is a different risk than an agent calling a tool it should not have called |
AI SOC platforms, which are the opposite problem
This is the single most common mix-up we see, and the phrasing is genuinely confusing. An AI SOC platform uses AI to run your security operations. We secure the AI your business is running. Same two words, opposite direction. If your problem is alert volume in the SOC, nothing on our site will help you and one of these will.
| Vendor | What it does | Buy it when |
|---|---|---|
| Exaforce | Agentic SOC platform whose AI agents handle detection, triage, investigation and response across cloud and SaaS telemetry. Raised a 125 million dollar Series B in May 2026 | Your analysts are drowning in alerts and you want the triage queue worked automatically |
| Prophet Security | AI SOC analyst that triages, investigates and responds to alerts, extended with threat hunting and detection engineering agents | Mean time to response is the number your board is asking about |
| Swimlane | Security automation and orchestration with AI layered on top of playbook-driven response | You already run structured playbooks and want them to execute with less human handling |
Worth saying out loud: if you deploy one of these, you have just put autonomous agents with broad read access into your security stack, and those agents are in scope for exactly the controls this site is about. The two purchases are compatible and the sequencing question is a real one.
Name collisions, so you do not lose an afternoon
Search Console shows people reaching this page while looking for the companies below. None of them compete with us, and two of them are not in software security at all.
| Name | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| Shield AI | Defense autonomy. AI pilots and unmanned aircraft for military operations. No relation to AI application security or to us |
| Zignal Labs | National security and narrative intelligence, analyzing open-source text, imagery and video signals. A media and mission intelligence product, not a security control |
| AuthMind | Identity observability and identity threat detection across human, non-human and agent identities. Genuinely adjacent to agent identity, but the product watches identity flows rather than enforcing on a tool call |
| Presidio | Two different things share the name: a large IT solutions and managed services provider, and Microsoft Presidio, an open-source library for detecting and redacting personal data |
| Microsoft Security Copilot | Microsoft security operations assistant. Distinct from GitHub Copilot security, which is about securing a coding agent. We cover the second, on GitHub Copilot security |
One more distinction that keeps coming up in vendor calls. Third-party risk platforms assess the suppliers you onboard, which is a real and separate job from controlling your own agents at runtime. We walk through where each layer stops on the Lema AI comparison, and the tooling most teams are missing sits in MCP server security.
Alternatives
Lema AI alternative
Lema AI does agentic third-party exposure management: it assesses your vendors and watches what they can reach. Agentshield does not do that job. It controls what your own AI agents do at the moment they act, which is a surface no vendor assessment can see.
Read the comparisonLakera alternative
Lakera is strong at prompt-injection guardrails. Agentshield is the alternative for teams that also need tool and data permissions, monitoring, and a full audit trail in one plane.
Read the comparisonLasso Security alternative
Lasso is strong at LLM and MCP monitoring. Agentshield adds runtime enforcement: it does not just watch risky actions, it blocks and gates them in the action path.
Read the comparisonPrompt Security alternative
Prompt Security covers a broad slice of LLM protection. Agentshield is the agent-first alternative that unifies firewall, permissions, monitoring, and audit for agents that take actions.
Read the comparisonPalo Alto Prisma AIRS alternative
Prisma AIRS is a comprehensive enterprise suite. Agentshield is the developer-first alternative you can drop in front of an agent in an afternoon, with prices on the page.
Read the comparisonRobust Intelligence alternative
Robust Intelligence is strong at AI validation and testing. Agentshield is the alternative that stays in the live action path, blocking and gating actions in production.
Read the comparisonOpen-source guardrails alternative
Open-source guardrails are flexible and free, but you own the prompt-injection arms race, the policy engine, and the audit store forever. Agentshield is the managed control plane instead.
Read the comparisonZenity alternative
Zenity raised a 125 million Series C on August 3, 2026 and is the best-funded independent company in this market. Agentshield is the alternative for teams that want to put a runtime control plane in front of one agent, self-serve, this week.
Read the comparisonCalypsoAI alternative
CalypsoAI is now part of F5, focused on securing AI inference. Agentshield is the independent, self-serve alternative built around what an agent does after the model responds: the tools it calls and the actions it takes.
Read the comparisonHead to head
Comparisons reflect our understanding of publicly available information and are meant to be fair. Vendors evolve; verify the latest before deciding.
FAQ
Common questions about AI agent security vendors.
Who are the main AI agent security vendors?
The runtime and guardrail market centers on Lakera, now part of Check Point, Prompt Security, now part of SentinelOne, Prisma AIRS from Palo Alto Networks, Cisco AI Defense, built on the Robust Intelligence acquisition, plus independents including Lasso Security, Zenity and Agentshield. Open-source guardrail libraries cover a narrower slice of the same problem.
Which AI agent security companies are still independent?
As of August 2026, Lasso Security, Zenity and Agentshield remain independent. Lakera, Prompt Security, Robust Intelligence, CalypsoAI and Aim Security have all been acquired by larger security vendors since September 2025. Zenity is the best funded of the independents after raising a 125 million Series C on August 3, 2026, bringing its total to roughly 180 million.
Does it matter if an AI security vendor has been acquired?
It matters commercially more than technically. If you already buy from the acquiring platform, an add-on inside an existing contract is a genuinely faster path. If you do not, expect roadmap priorities to follow the parent platform, standalone pricing to become sales-led, and integration work to favor the acquirer stack over whatever you actually run.
What is the difference between AI guardrails and an agent control plane?
Guardrails inspect text going into and out of a model, catching prompt injection, leakage and content violations. A control plane governs what the agent does next: which tools it may call, which data it may reach, which actions need human approval, and what gets recorded. Guardrails protect the conversation, a control plane protects the consequence.
What is the difference between an AI SOC platform and AI agent security?
An AI SOC platform uses AI to run your security operations, automating alert triage, investigation and response. Vendors here include Exaforce, Prophet Security and Swimlane. AI agent security does the reverse: it secures the AI systems your business runs, governing which tools an agent may call and which data it may reach. Same words, opposite direction, and the two are complements rather than competitors.
What are the main HiddenLayer and Protect AI alternatives?
Both are model-centric, so the closest alternatives are the other model security platforms: HiddenLayer, Prisma AIRS from Palo Alto Networks, which is where Protect AI now lives after the 2025 acquisition, Cisco AI Defense and Noma Security. Agentshield is not a direct alternative to either. We do not scan model artifacts for backdoors. We enforce on what an agent does at runtime, which is a different control at a different point.
Is Shield AI the same thing as AI agent security?
No, and the name similarity trips people up regularly. Shield AI builds defense autonomy, meaning AI pilots and unmanned aircraft for military operations. It has no relationship to securing enterprise AI applications or agents. Zignal Labs is a second common mix-up: it does national security and narrative intelligence rather than application security.
How should I shortlist an AI agent security vendor?
Start with the shape of your exposure. If your risk is a chat or RAG app producing text, weigh guardrail quality and red teaming. If your agents call tools, move money or change records, weigh per-agent permission scopes, approval gates and an independent audit trail. Then ask every vendor where their product stops, and be wary of the ones who say nowhere.