CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

42Crunch vs Lakera

42Crunch sells a platform for governing the security of MCP servers, APIs and AI agents at enterprise scale. 42Crunch says it helps enterprises bring AI security under control. 42Crunch describes the job as discovering every MCP server that AI agents expose or consume, securing each one against attack, and assessing compliance with AI regulations and security frameworks. Lakera sells AI Red Teaming, AI Agent Security and Workforce AI Security, which together help organizations secure employees, applications, and autonomous agents. CISO Tribune files both under AI model and agent security. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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Up to four companies side by side.

  • 42Crunch
  • Lakera
42Crunch vs Lakera: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
42Crunch42Crunch sells a platform for governing the security of MCP servers, APIs and AI agents at enterprise scale. 42Crunch says it helps enterprises bring AI security under control. 42Crunch describes the job as discovering every MCP server that AI agents expose or consume, securing each one against attack, and assessing compliance with AI regulations and security frameworks.42crunch.comLakeraLakera sells AI Red Teaming, AI Agent Security and Workforce AI Security, which together help organizations secure employees, applications, and autonomous agents.lakera.ai
What it sells
  • AI Regulatory Compliance[5]Evaluates every MCP server against regulatory and industry frameworks. Maps each finding to the control it breaches.
  • AI Red Teaming[1][5][6]A continuous workflow to evaluate, scan, and red team AI applications and agents.
Categories
Headquarters
London, United KingdomZurich, Switzerland[2]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2021[2]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesOwned by Check Point Software Technologies since 2025[3][5]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • September 23, 202642Crunch announced the general availability of its MCP Security Governance solution.[8]
  • January 19, 202642Crunch announced the availability of API Contract Generator in developer IDEs.[9]
Not stated on its pages
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
From its own pages, 42Crunch sells mainly to enterprise security and platform teams that govern MCP servers, APIs and AI agent security at scale. Its pricing is sized to the number of APIs, MCP servers and users in an organization. Individual developers who use its AI coding agent plugins have a separate self-serve pricing option.Lakera describes organizations that run AI across employees, applications, and autonomous agents as the audience for its three AI security products. Lakera positions AI Agent Security for organizations that build and deploy agents. Lakera Guard is sold for LLM applications.
Last verified
November 9, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

  • 42Crunch and Lakera are both filed under AI model and agent security.

Where they differ, field by field

  • 42Crunch's primary category is API security; Lakera's is AI firewalls and guardrails.
  • 42Crunch is also filed under Dynamic application security testing. Lakera is also filed under Workforce AI usage security.
  • 42Crunch lists AI Regulatory Compliance. Lakera lists AI Red Teaming.
  • 42Crunch is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Lakera is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Lakera was founded in 2021.
  • Lakera is owned by Check Point Software Technologies, since 2025.

What it sells: 42Crunch

What AI Regulatory Compliance does[5]
42Crunch continuously evaluates every MCP server against the regulatory and industry frameworks an organization answers to. It maps each finding to the specific control it breaches. The page says compliance posture is computed by the control on every audit and every scan, not assembled from documents afterward. Its headline refers to real-time compliance reporting mapped to five frameworks.

What it sells: Lakera

What AI Red Teaming does[1][5][6]
AI Red Teaming tests with prompt injection, jailbreaks, tool exploitation, and multi-turn attacks against real systems. AI Red Teaming provides exploit validation, severity scoring, and remediation guidance. AI Red Teaming is available for text, audio, image, and multi-modal systems.

Questions about 42Crunch and Lakera

What do 42Crunch and Lakera sell?
42Crunch sells AI Regulatory Compliance. Lakera sells AI Red Teaming.
Are 42Crunch and Lakera in the same category?
They share AI model and agent security. 42Crunch's primary category is API security and Lakera's is AI firewalls and guardrails.
Where are 42Crunch and Lakera headquartered?
42Crunch is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Lakera is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.
When were 42Crunch and Lakera founded?
Lakera was founded in 2021.
Who owns 42Crunch and Lakera?
Lakera is owned by Check Point Software Technologies, since 2025.
Who are 42Crunch and Lakera sold to?
From its own pages, 42Crunch sells mainly to enterprise security and platform teams that govern MCP servers, APIs and AI agent security at scale. Lakera describes organizations that run AI across employees, applications, and autonomous agents as the audience for its three AI security products.
What have 42Crunch and Lakera announced recently?
September 23, 2026: 42Crunch announced the general availability of its MCP Security Governance solution.

About 42Crunch

42Crunch sells a platform for governing the security of MCP servers, APIs and AI agents at enterprise scale. 42Crunch says it helps enterprises bring AI security under control. 42Crunch describes the job as discovering every MCP server that AI agents expose or consume, securing each one against attack, and assessing compliance with AI regulations and security frameworks.[4][10]

42Crunch says AI coding agents ship MCP servers faster than any manual inventory process can track. 42Crunch discovers every MCP server across an organization automatically, both sanctioned and shadow alike, audits each one and ranks it by risk. 42Crunch says every request from an AI agent passes through the MCP server before it ever reaches an enterprise system or the API behind it. 42Crunch also says an MCP tool is only as secure as the API it wraps.[4]

42Crunch says its deterministic contract-driven model applies equally to the MCP and API layer. Every MCP server and every API behind it gets a machine-readable contract of its declared surface. In the 42Crunch model, discovery writes the contract, testing measures against it, and runtime enforces it. 42Crunch says the model it uses to secure APIs now extends to the MCP servers AI agents call and expose.[4][6]

On the MCP side, 42Crunch sweeps registries, gateways and repos to surface the shadow servers agents are already calling, then reads each server's advertised tools, resources and prompts and emits a contract. Every finding carries severity, evidence and the fix. 42Crunch fails the build when a server leaves its approved contract, then keeps watching the one in production for new tools, rewritten descriptions and widened permissions.[4]

Tests are generated from the OpenAPI definition and run in the pipeline, covering broken object-level authorization, broken auth, mass assignment and unrestricted resource consumption. All AI generated code is automatically fixed by 42Crunch. For runtime, 42Crunch describes a positive-security firewall assembled from the contract itself, where unknown paths, extra parameters, malformed payloads and over-sharing responses are rejected before they reach the backend.[4]

For compliance, 42Crunch says the EU AI Act, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, CSA AICM and OWASP are all tagged automatically on every audit. A security review doubles as compliance evidence without extra work. Each finding arrives already tied to the control it answers, so the audit trail for an AI estate is a by-product of the scan. 42Crunch computes compliance posture control by control on every audit and every scan, not assembled from documents afterward. Each audit and scan checks a server against all applicable frameworks at the same time.[4][5][11]

A server below the threshold does not reach production.[12]

42Crunch is built for enterprise security and platform teams governing MCP servers, APIs and AI agent security at scale. 42Crunch pairs API Audit, Scan and Protection with MCP Contract, Audit, Scan and Protect on one platform, with one set of SQG policies and one CI/CD pattern. Pricing includes a dedicated encrypted tenant, SSO and a dedicated support manager, sized to the number of APIs, MCP servers and users. Individual developers who use the 42Crunch AI coding agent plugins have a self-serve pricing option.[2][3][4][5][6][7][10][12]

42Crunch on the record

Sources

42Crunch full record

  1. [1]42crunch criticalblue announce partnership42Crunch · 42crunch.com · published November 21, 2018 · Tier A
  2. [2]42crunch.com42Crunch · 42crunch.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]42crunch publishes state of api security 202642Crunch · 42crunch.com · published February 11, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]42Crunch — AI Security Platform for MCP42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Regulatory Compliance | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Management der MCP-Server-Sicherheitslage | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]About 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]42Crunch Launches MCP Security Governance, Giving Enterprises Detailed AI Exposure Management and Compliance with AI Regulatory Frameworks42Crunch · published September 23, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]42Crunch Launches API Contract Generator in Developer IDEs42Crunch · published January 19, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Pricing | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]KI-Regulierungskonformität | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Management der MCP-Server-Sicherheitslage | 42Crunch42Crunch · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A

Lakera full record

  1. [1]Lakera: The AI-Native Security Platform to Accelerate GenAILakera · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Check point acquires lakera to deliver end to end ai security for enterprisesCheck Point Software Technologies · checkpoint.com · published September 16, 2025 · Tier A
  3. [3]Check point software reports fourth quarter and 2025 full year resultsCheck Point Software Technologies · checkpoint.com · published February 12, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]AI Agent Security Overview | Check Point AI SecurityLakera documentation · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Workforce AI Security | Lakera, a Check Point CompanyLakera · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Red Teaming Services: Expert-led adversarial testingLakera · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Guardrails Dashboard | Check Point AI SecurityLakera documentation · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Secure AI Agents from Discovery to RuntimeLakera · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Lakera Launches Open-Source Security Benchmark for LLM Backends in AI AgentsBusiness Wire · published October 28, 2025 · Tier A
  10. [10]Product Peek: Introducing Lakera’s Advanced Content ModerationLakera · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Q4 2025 AI Agent Security TrendsLakera · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]AI Security for Product Teams HandbookLakera · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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