CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

42Crunch vs Zenity

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. Zenity sells an AI agent security platform built to govern how agents behave, not just what they say or generate. 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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  • 42Crunch
  • Zenity
42Crunch vs Zenity: 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.comZenityZenity sells an AI agent security platform built to govern how agents behave, not just what they say or generate.zenity.io
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 Observability[5]Builds a live inventory of every agent across an organization's environment and tracks the data those agents access.
  • AI Security Posture Management (AISPM)[7]Evaluates configuration, permissions, and integrations before an agent goes live.
  • Boundaries[4][6][8]Evaluates every agent action in real time against an organization's rules and decides to let it through, block it, or shut the agent down.
  • AI Detection and Response (AIDR)[9]AIDR reads the full sequence of an agent's activity, detecting threats mapped to the OWASP LLM and MITRE ATLAS frameworks.
  • Zenity Security Assessment Hub[13]A set of 10 free, open-source tools built by Zenity Labs to help security teams identify and understand immediate risks.
Categories
Headquarters
London, United KingdomNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pages2021[2]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[3][6][17]
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]
  • September 23, 2026Zenity was named a Market Shaper in Gartner's inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security.[15]
  • August 3, 2026Zenity announced a $125 million Series C round led by Norwest.[14]
  • June 17, 2026Zenity and Carahsoft announced a partnership under which Carahsoft serves as Zenity's Public Sector distributor.[17]
  • March 17, 2026Zenity announced general availability of runtime security controls for AI agents built on Microsoft Foundry.[16]
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.Zenity describes a global financial services firm and a global asset manager as organizations that write policy rules for agents. Zenity covers agents embedded in SaaS tools, home-grown agentic platforms in the cloud, and end-user devices. Zenity gives security and platform teams a single place to surface, enforce, and protect MCP usage.
Last verified
November 9, 2026November 9, 2026

Where they overlap

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

Where they differ, field by field

  • 42Crunch's primary category is API security; Zenity's is AI model and agent security.
  • 42Crunch is also filed under Dynamic application security testing. Zenity is also filed under AI governance.
  • 42Crunch lists AI Regulatory Compliance. Zenity lists AI Observability, AI Security Posture Management (AISPM), Boundaries, AI Detection and Response (AIDR) and Zenity Security Assessment Hub.
  • 42Crunch is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
  • Zenity was founded in 2021.
  • Zenity is privately held.

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: Zenity

What AI Observability does[5]
AI Observability is Zenity's discovery and visibility layer for AI agents. Data Lens surfaces sensitive files and pages that are both frequently accessed and broadly exposed across agents.
What AI Security Posture Management (AISPM) does[7]
AISPM evaluates configuration and permissions for agents embedded in platforms like Microsoft Copilot Studio, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Salesforce Agentforce. AISPM applies stricter enforcement in production and more flexible policy in development or sandbox environments.
What Boundaries does[4][6][8]
Boundaries is Zenity's runtime enforcement engine. A rule written once in Boundaries is enforced on Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Agentforce, Bedrock, coding agents, and homegrown builds. Boundaries includes a built-in AI assistant that turns a plain-language request into a working rule.
What AI Detection and Response (AIDR) does[9]
AI Detection and Response (AIDR) is Zenity's runtime security layer for AI agents. AIDR detects direct and indirect prompt injection and blocks execution before the agent acts on them. AIDR breaks every agent interaction into individual steps and groups them by thread in a single activity table.
What Zenity Security Assessment Hub does[13]
The Zenity Security Assessment Hub is built by Zenity Labs. The tools take a Red-Team approach to visualize threats across Microsoft 365, with a focus on 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Power Platform.

Questions about 42Crunch and Zenity

What do 42Crunch and Zenity sell?
42Crunch sells AI Regulatory Compliance. Zenity sells AI Observability, AI Security Posture Management (AISPM), Boundaries, AI Detection and Response (AIDR) and Zenity Security Assessment Hub.
Are 42Crunch and Zenity in the same category?
They share AI model and agent security. 42Crunch's primary category is API security and Zenity's is AI model and agent security.
Where are 42Crunch and Zenity headquartered?
42Crunch is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
When were 42Crunch and Zenity founded?
Zenity was founded in 2021.
Who owns 42Crunch and Zenity?
Zenity is privately held.
Who are 42Crunch and Zenity 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. Zenity describes a global financial services firm and a global asset manager as organizations that write policy rules for agents.
What have 42Crunch and Zenity announced recently?
September 23, 2026: 42Crunch announced the general availability of its MCP Security Governance solution. September 23, 2026: Zenity was named a Market Shaper in Gartner's inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security.

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

Zenity full record

  1. [1]AI Agent Security and Governance | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Zenity announces strategic investment led by m12Zenity · zenity.io · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Zenity raises 38m series b funding round to secure agentic aiZenity · zenity.io · published October 29, 2024 · Tier A
  4. [4]AI Agent Security & Governance Platform for the Enterprise | ZenityZenity · undated page, accessed October 30, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Observability | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Agent Security | Model Context Protocol (MCP) | ZenityZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Security Posture Management | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Runtime Boundaries | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI Detection and Response (AIDRZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Agentic Identity & Access Management: Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Securing Financial Services AI | Zenity, Microsoft & SlalomZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Company | Zenity | Secure AI Agents EverywhereZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Zenity Security Assessment Hub | Zenity | Secure AI Agents EverywhereZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Zenity Raises $125 Million to Secure the Era of 1 Billion AI AgentsZenity · published August 3, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Zenity Named a Market Shaper in Gartner’s Inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application SecurityZenity · published September 23, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Zenity Announces Availability of Inline Agent Runtime Security for Agents Built on Microsoft FoundryZenity · published March 17, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Zenity and Carahsoft Bring AI Agent Security and Governance to Federal, State and Local AgenciesZenity · published June 17, 2026 · Tier A

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