CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Apono vs Cygrid

Apono is a cloud-native privileged access management platform that grants just-in-time access to humans, machines, and AI agents, then revokes it automatically. Cygrid sells a platform that finds shadow AI, over-scoped tokens and leftover admin rights across SaaS, checks every action by humans, service accounts and AI agents, and secures actions by applying customer policy. CISO Tribune files both under Non-human identity 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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  • Apono
  • Cygrid
Apono vs Cygrid: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
AponoApono is a cloud-native privileged access management platform that grants just-in-time access to humans, machines, and AI agents, then revokes it automatically.apono.ioCygridCygrid sells a platform that finds shadow AI, over-scoped tokens and leftover admin rights across SaaS, checks every action by humans, service accounts and AI agents, and secures actions by applying customer policy.cygrid.io
What it sells
  • Apono Privileged CloudExtends ZSP across cloud platforms using provider-native language and dynamic guardrails.
  • Apono Agent Privilege Guard[3]Applies the JIT model to non-human identities, with IBAC.
  • Identity Intelligence Graph[1][4]Holds humans, non-human identities, AI agents, tokens, MCP servers and resources in one graph.
  • MCP Gateway[3][8]Sits in the tool-call path and audits, allows, rewrites or blocks every agent tool call at runtime.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesBerlin, Germany[2]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2026[2][3]
Ownership and funding
Owned by 1Password since 2026[2][3][7][19][20]Not stated on its pages
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • June 15, 20261Password announced it has acquired Apono, a just-in-time access provider, without disclosing financial terms.[19]
  • June 15, 20261Password announced its acquisition of Apono, extending its identity security platform to governing access for humans, machines and AI identities.[7]
Not stated on its pages
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 5, 2026[20]
  • 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, Apono sells mainly to security, IAM, and DevOps teams that want to reduce standing privileges. Its pages describe customers ranging from mid-sized enterprises to Fortune 500s. Apono addresses cloud, Kubernetes, and database environments, and on-prem and hybrid infrastructure. Apono describes healthcare organizations handling PHI. Apono describes AI agents moving into production infrastructure.Finance teams whose AI agents work with ledger and bank data are among the audiences it addresses. Mid-sized retailers that run several stores are among the audiences it addresses. IT operations teams dealing with unused accounts, standing admin rights and forgotten tokens across SaaS are an audience, as are security and compliance teams that need evidence for NIS2, DORA and the EU AI Act.
Last verified
November 9, 2026October 23, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Apono and Cygrid are both filed under Non-human identity security.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Apono's primary category is Privileged access management; Cygrid's is Non-human identity security.
  • Apono is also filed under AI model and agent security. Cygrid is also filed under AI governance, AI firewalls and guardrails and Identity threat detection and response.
  • Apono lists Apono Privileged Cloud and Apono Agent Privilege Guard. Cygrid lists Identity Intelligence Graph and MCP Gateway.
  • Cygrid is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
  • Cygrid was founded in 2026.
  • Apono is owned by 1Password, since 2026.

What it sells: Apono

What Apono Privileged Cloud does
Apono Privileged Cloud extends ZSP across cloud platforms using provider-native language and dynamic guardrails. Engineers request and receive JIT access through Slack, Teams, Jira, or the CLI.
What Apono Agent Privilege Guard does[3]
Agent Privilege Guard applies the same JIT model to non-human identities, with IBAC. Every agent declares its intent before acting, and Apono validates that intent against actual actions at runtime.

What it sells: Cygrid

What Identity Intelligence Graph does[1][4]
Cygrid models the action, meaning the permission actually in play, in full context. The graph models access as SaaS actions rather than roles, so risk can be compared across tools.

Questions about Apono and Cygrid

What do Apono and Cygrid sell?
Apono sells Apono Privileged Cloud and Apono Agent Privilege Guard. Cygrid sells Identity Intelligence Graph and MCP Gateway.
Are Apono and Cygrid in the same category?
They share Non-human identity security. Apono's primary category is Privileged access management and Cygrid's is Non-human identity security.
Where are Apono and Cygrid headquartered?
Cygrid is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
When were Apono and Cygrid founded?
Cygrid was founded in 2026.
Who owns Apono and Cygrid?
Apono is owned by 1Password, since 2026.
Who are Apono and Cygrid sold to?
From its own pages, Apono sells mainly to security, IAM, and DevOps teams that want to reduce standing privileges. Finance teams whose AI agents work with ledger and bank data are among the audiences it addresses.
What have Apono and Cygrid announced recently?
June 15, 2026: 1Password announced it has acquired Apono, a just-in-time access provider, without disclosing financial terms.

About Apono

Apono is a cloud-native privileged access management platform that grants just-in-time access to humans, machines, and AI agents, then revokes it automatically. Apono is now part of 1Password.[1][8]

Apono says most organizations still run on always-on admin rights that sit unused until an attacker needs them. Apono says security, IAM, and DevOps teams cut standing privilege risk without parking engineers in a ticket queue. Apono describes modern PAM as pairing Just-in-Time (JIT) grants with Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) so privileged rights do not linger after the task.[8]

Apono offers a module that secures privileged access to on-prem and hybrid infrastructure: databases, Kubernetes, compute, and more. Infrastructure Guard combines account vaulting, MFA-enforced access requests, and dynamic guardrails to enforce ZSP at the infrastructure layer. Every session in Infrastructure Guard becomes passwordless, logged, and fully auditable. Apono Privileged Cloud extends ZSP across cloud platforms using provider-native language and dynamic guardrails. Apono gives engineers JIT access requests through Slack, Teams, Jira, or the CLI.[8]

Agent Privilege Guard applies the same JIT model to non-human identities, with IBAC. Intent-Based Access Control (IBAC) on Apono Agent Privilege Guard checks what an agent declares it will do against what it actually does at runtime. Apono says every agent declares its intent before acting, and Apono validates that intent against actual actions at runtime. Apono says AI agents cannot inherit standing admin access.[8]

Apono says all three modules share a unified policy engine, privilege orchestrator, and audit trail. Apono says adding capabilities does not mean starting over. Apono customers can start with the environments that matter most and add capabilities as access requirements evolve.[8]

Apono creates IAM roles, permissions, and access policies at request time, scoped to the exact need and in the native policy language of the cloud platform. Apono creates roles dynamically in the native policy language of AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and databases. Customers set business guardrails and Apono writes the short-lived permissions, so customers do not maintain a growing library of pre-built roles. Engineers request and receive access through Slack, the CLI, service workflows, or Apono Assist.[8]

Apono logs every request, approval, grant, and revocation with business context. Apono says AI-generated session summaries help teams produce evidence for SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, and related compliance programs. Apono says anomaly detection flags behavior that drifts from normal patterns, so audits start from a complete trail. The Apono Cloud Privileged Access Platform helps organizations comply with HIPAA and HITECH regulations for protecting electronic protected health information (ePHI). Apono shows how much damage a compromised AI agent or identity could do across every connected integration in the environment.[8][9]

Apono connects to individual AWS Accounts or entire AWS Organizations and continuously discovers the environment, from core services like S3, EC2, EKS, Redshift, and Lambda to supporting databases and IAM resources. Apono grants access to AWS resources only when required and revokes it automatically through JIT and JEA provisioning. Apono grants just-in-time, task-specific access to on-call engineers during incidents. Apono continuously discovers EKS resources, including clusters, namespaces, secrets, ConfigMaps, deployments, StatefulSets, ingresses, CronJobs, and Jobs. Apono continuously discovers Snowflake roles and lets security teams enforce granular, dynamic, time-bound, and context-aware access policies across Snowflake environments. Apono integrates with JumpCloud to enable ZSP and JIT access provisioning for JumpCloud Groups. Users are automatically removed from the JumpCloud group once their task is complete. Apono creates dynamic Access Flows using Microsoft Active Directory identities, policies, and groups. Apono gives developers self-serviceable access to instances using Google Cloud SQL - PostgreSQL. Apono gives developers self-serviceable access to instances using Redis Cloud (RedisLabs). Apono integrates with DynamoDB to automate the administration of DynamoDB database access. Apono says users can draw on user and resource context from over 100 integrations.[8][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

A technology company partnered with Apono to manage privileged access during its cloud transition.[1][4][5][6][8][9][11][18]

Apono on the record

Sources

Apono full record

  1. [1]apono.ioApono · apono.io · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]1password acquires apono1Password · 1password.com · published June 15, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Troubleshoot a webhook | Documentation and Guides | AponoApono · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Human Resource ManagementApono · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Databases and Data Repositories | Documentation and Guides | AponoApono · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Manage webhooksApono · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]1Password Pioneers Access Governance for Humans, Machines, and AI Agents with Acquisition of AponoBusiness Wire · published June 15, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Privileged Access Management Platform | Apono JIT PAMApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Apono HIPAA & HITECH Compliance - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Just-in-time access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Just-in-time access to EKS - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Snowflake Integration - Apono Access AutomationApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Jumpcloud Integration - Apono Access AutomationApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Microsoft AD Integration - Apono Access AutomationApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Just-in-time access to Google Cloud SQL - PostgreSQL - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Just-in-time access to Redis Cloud (RedisLabs) - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Just-in-time access to AWS DynamoDB - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]Scaling Access Security - AponoApono · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  19. [19]1Password acquires just-in-time access provider AponoSiliconANGLE · published June 15, 2026 · Tier B
  20. [20]Apono Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features - G2G2 · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier C

Cygrid full record

  1. [1]cygrid.ioCygrid · cygrid.io · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]AboutCygrid · cygrid.io · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Cygrid emerges from stealthCygrid · cygrid.io · published October 22, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Identity Enforcement for AI-Driven Enterprises | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Identity Enforcement Platform | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Least Privilege Across Your SaaS | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Identity Intelligence Graph | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]MCP Gateway for AI Agents | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Secure AI Agent Rollout for AI Teams | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Identity Enforcement Use Cases | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Integrations: Okta, Entra ID, SaaS & AI | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Identity Policy Enforcement & Compliance | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Identity Enforcement for Fintech & NIS2/DORA | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Identity Enforcement for E-commerce | CygridCygrid · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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