CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Asymptote Labs vs KnowBe4

Asymptote Labs sells a runtime data platform for AI agents. KnowBe4 sells attack simulation and training, email and collaboration security, and agent security through the KnowBe4 Platform. 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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  • Asymptote Labs
  • KnowBe4
Asymptote Labs vs KnowBe4: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
Asymptote LabsAsymptote Labs sells a runtime data platform for AI agents.asymptotelabs.aiKnowBe4KnowBe4 sells attack simulation and training, email and collaboration security, and agent security through the KnowBe4 Platform.knowbe4.com
What it sells
  • Agent Beacon[2][3][4]An open-source telemetry layer for capturing and normalizing agent activity across every environment.
  • Asymptote Platform[4]A managed runtime data platform for operating AI agents across the organization.
  • Asymptote Guard[7][9]Controls that steer behavior, block actions inline, revoke access, contain sessions, or terminate agents.
  • Security Awareness Training[4][5][7]Education on recognizing threats, reinforced with phishing and vishing simulations.
  • Cloud Email Security[10]A suite of AI-driven products for inbound and outbound email.
  • Defend[1][4][5][6][10][11]Inbound email protection against phishing, ransomware and business email compromise.
  • Prevent[5][10][12]Outbound email protection and data loss prevention.
  • Compliance Plus[13]Compliance training platform.
  • Student Edition[5]Security awareness training for academic institutions.
  • BreachSim[14]A free tool to identify network vulnerabilities.
  • Weak Password Test[15]A free tool that finds users with weak passwords.
Categories
Headquarters
New York City, United States[2]Clearwater, United States
Founded
Not stated on its pages2010[1]
Ownership and funding
Privately heldOwned by Vista Equity Partners since 2023[2][4][8][9]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • October 20, 2026Asymptote Labs announced an oversubscribed $5.5 million seed round led by Tower Research Ventures.[12]
  • May 5, 2026KnowBe4 launched a two-tier Security Awareness Training offering and a new AI defense agent for custom content creation.[7]
  • April 6, 2026Dashlane announced an integration with KnowBe4 that links credential risk detection to security training for at-risk users.[18]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 4, 2026[8]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: listed, seen November 4, 2026[9]
Who it fits
Not written yetNot written yet
Last verified
October 21, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4 are both filed under AI model and agent security.
  • Both are headquartered in the United States.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Asymptote Labs's primary category is AI model and agent security; KnowBe4's is Security awareness training.
  • Asymptote Labs is also filed under AI governance and Workforce AI usage security. KnowBe4 is also filed under Human risk management and Email security.
  • Asymptote Labs lists Agent Beacon, Asymptote Platform and Asymptote Guard. KnowBe4 lists Security Awareness Training, Cloud Email Security, Defend, Prevent, Compliance Plus and 3 more.
  • Asymptote Labs is headquartered in New York City, United States. KnowBe4 is headquartered in Clearwater, United States.
  • KnowBe4 was founded in 2010.
  • Asymptote Labs is privately held. KnowBe4 is owned by Vista Equity Partners, since 2023.

What it sells: Asymptote Labs

What Agent Beacon does[2][3][4]
Agent Beacon captures activity across 20+ agent harnesses including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and OpenClaw. Agent Beacon forwards normalized telemetry to Splunk, Datadog, CrowdStrike, and other existing systems. Agent Beacon stores a portable local activity record in JSONL.
What Asymptote Platform does[4]
Asymptote Platform is a managed runtime data platform for operating AI agents across the organization. Asymptote Platform includes managed ingest, retention, search, and analytics. Asymptote Platform includes fleet-wide agent inventory and usage visibility.
What Asymptote Guard does[7][9]
Asymptote Guard steers behavior, blocks actions inline, revokes access, contains sessions, or terminates agents when needed. Asymptote Guard enforces model, budget, and session-level controls so teams can limit expensive usage, stop runaway workflows, and keep AI spend within policy.

What it sells: KnowBe4

What Security Awareness Training does[4][5][7]
KnowBe4 says it delivers timely, personalized education that helps people recognize threats. Lessons are reinforced with realistic phishing and vishing simulations.
What Cloud Email Security does[10]
KnowBe4 Cloud Email Security is a suite of AI-driven products designed to detect and prevent advanced email threats across inbound and outbound communication. Contextual banners and prompts are delivered at the point of risk.
What Defend does[1][4][5][6][10][11]
Defend detects and blocks phishing, ransomware and business email compromise with behavioral AI and self-learning threat models. Defend inserts color-coded banners on flagged email and rewrites links, checking them at time of click. Defend integrates with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 through API-based connectivity.
What Prevent does[5][10][12]
Prevent monitors outbound email in real time and alerts users to risky behavior, such as accidental sends or misdirected emails. Prevent is integrated with Microsoft Outlook and Office 365. Prevent Enterprise adds misdirected content detection and custom DLP policies.
What Compliance Plus does[13]
Compliance Plus has a training library of 1000+ items of compliance training content. Compliance Plus offers targeted training for requirements such as HIPAA, PCI and GDPR. Organizations can upload SCORM-compliant content to the KnowBe4 LMS.
What Student Edition does[5]
The KnowBe4 Student Edition enables academic institutions to prepare students to identify and prevent modern cyberattacks. Its training content covers phishing, BYOD risks, password hygiene, social media risks and campus scams.
What BreachSim does[14]
BreachSim is a free tool from KnowBe4 to identify network vulnerabilities. BreachSim tests over 12 realistic data exfiltration scenarios following the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
What Weak Password Test does[15]
The Weak Password Test is a free tool to help IT Administrators know which users have passwords that are easily guessed. It checks the Active Directory and generates a report of users with weak passwords.

Questions about Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4

What do Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4 sell?
Asymptote Labs sells Agent Beacon, Asymptote Platform and Asymptote Guard. KnowBe4 sells Security Awareness Training, Cloud Email Security, Defend, Prevent, Compliance Plus and 3 more.
Are Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4 in the same category?
They share AI model and agent security. Asymptote Labs's primary category is AI model and agent security and KnowBe4's is Security awareness training.
Where are Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4 headquartered?
Asymptote Labs is headquartered in New York City, United States. KnowBe4 is headquartered in Clearwater, United States.
When were Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4 founded?
KnowBe4 was founded in 2010.
Who owns Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4?
Asymptote Labs is privately held. KnowBe4 is owned by Vista Equity Partners, since 2023.
What have Asymptote Labs and KnowBe4 announced recently?
October 20, 2026: Asymptote Labs announced an oversubscribed $5.5 million seed round led by Tower Research Ventures. May 5, 2026: KnowBe4 launched a two-tier Security Awareness Training offering and a new AI defense agent for custom content creation.

About Asymptote Labs

Asymptote Labs sells a runtime data platform for AI agents. Asymptote gives teams one place to understand agent activity, investigate behavior, enforce controls, and analyze usage across tools and environments. Asymptote provides enterprise security and engineering teams a unified AI telemetry layer to see what agents are doing, govern how they operate, and continuously improve them over time.[3]

Asymptote says agents are spreading across tools and teams faster than organizations can track them. Asymptote says agents can access data and take actions without enough real-time oversight or control. Asymptote says teams can't see which agents are effective, failing, or wasting spend.[3]

Beacon is the open-source part of the offering. Asymptote is powered by Beacon, an open-source telemetry layer for capturing and normalizing agent activity across every environment. Agent Beacon is the open-source telemetry foundation, and the Asymptote platform builds on it with the managed control enterprises need to govern agent activity at scale. Agent Beacon captures activity across 20+ agent harnesses including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and OpenClaw. Agent Beacon forwards normalized telemetry to Splunk, Datadog, CrowdStrike, and other existing systems. Agent Beacon stores a portable local activity record in JSONL. Beacon gives Security and IT teams local endpoint visibility into supported agent harnesses. Beacon normalizes captured activity into a stable endpoint event schema and writes JSONL for local inspection or customer-managed forwarding.[3][4][5]

Beacon is deployed to endpoints in several ways. Asymptote deploys Beacon across endpoints with Jamf, Fleet, and other MDM workflows. Beacon macOS deployment uses a signed and notarized package distributed through Jamf Pro, Fleet, or another MDM. On Linux, the Beacon collector runs as a systemd service. Beacon browser chat telemetry is limited to the Claude.ai and ChatGPT conversation streams captured by the optional Agent Beacon browser extension.[4][5][6][10]

Asymptote Platform is the managed layer. Asymptote Platform is a managed runtime data platform for operating AI agents across the organization. Asymptote Platform includes managed ingest, retention, search, and analytics. Asymptote Platform includes fleet-wide agent inventory and usage visibility. Asymptote captures prompts, tool calls, file edits, approvals, and runtime events. Asymptote inventories Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other agent harnesses. Asymptote normalizes activity into one consistent source of agent runtime data.[3][4]

Asymptote builds a complete inventory of agents and the environments they run in across an organization. Asymptote detects malicious and suspicious agent behavior in real time, with the full execution context needed to understand what happened. Asymptote surfaces threats like secret access, prompt injection, malicious tool use, suspicious commands, and data exfiltration across the complete agent session. Asymptote Guard steers behavior, blocks actions inline, revokes access, contains sessions, or terminates agents when needed. Asymptote adds visibility into the agent runtime, including the harness, prompt context, tool calls, resources accessed, and policy decisions behind each action.[1][7]

Asymptote correlates every action in an agent session so engineers can pinpoint failed commands, retries, tool errors, slow steps, and execution loops. Asymptote lets engineering teams understand which agents, models, and workflows developers rely on across the organization. Asymptote connects model spend to the teams, agents, users, and workflows that generated it. Asymptote adds runtime context, connecting AI spend to specific users, agents, repositories, sessions, and workflows. Asymptote Guard enforces model, budget, and session-level controls so teams can limit expensive usage, stop runaway workflows, and keep AI spend within policy.[8][9]

Asymptote can be self-hosted in AWS, Azure, or GCP for tighter control over infrastructure, networking, and data residency. Asymptote offers dedicated infrastructure for organizations that need tighter control over how agent data is stored and operated. Asymptote integrates with providers like Okta for secure access without additional passwords. Asymptote protects data with AES-256 for storage and backups and TLS 1.2+ for all data in transit. Asymptote enforces zero-day retention with providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, ensuring customer data is not stored or used for training. Asymptote connects to the tools teams already use and extends with custom actions for workflows and systems unique to a business.[4][10][11]

Asymptote Labs on the record

Sources

Asymptote Labs full record

  1. [1]asymptotelabs.aiAsymptote Labs · asymptotelabs.ai · undated page, accessed October 21, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Asymptote labs raises 5 5m seed roundAsymptote Labs · asymptotelabs.ai · published October 20, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Asymptote: Real-time Visibility & Control for AI AgentsAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]PricingAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Security & IT Rollout Guide - AsymptoteAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Linux Install - AsymptoteAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Asymptote For Security & ITAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Asymptote For EngineeringAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Asymptote For AI FinOpsAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]SecurityAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]IntegrationsAsymptote Labs · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Asymptote Labs Raises $5.5M to Build Runtime Infrastructure for AI Agents | AsymptoteAsymptote Labs · published October 20, 2026 · Tier A

KnowBe4 full record

  1. [1]About usKnowBe4 · knowbe4.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Vista equity partners completes acquisition of knowbe4KnowBe4 · knowbe4.com · published February 1, 2023 · Tier A
  3. [3]Contact usKnowBe4 · knowbe4.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]KnowBe4 | Secure Your Digital Workforce: Human + AIKnowBe4 · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]KnowBe4 Student Edition | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Warning: Attackers Are Using Calendar Invite Files to Evade Security FiltersKnowBe4 · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]KnowBe4 Launches AI-Native Attack Simulation & Training Product and Twelfth AI AgentBusiness Wire · published May 5, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training Reviews 2026 - G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier C
  9. [9]KnowBe4 Reviews, Ratings & Features 2026 | Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier C
  10. [10]Cloud Email Security for Microsoft 365 | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Pricing | DefendKnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Pricing | Prevent | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Compliance Plus: Compliance Training Platform | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]BreachSim | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Weak Password Test | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Security Culture Report Analysis Center | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]KnowBe4 Customer Success | KnowBe4KnowBe4 · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]Dashlane Launches First-of-its-Kind Integration with KnowBe4 to Transform Security Awareness into Proactive DefensePR Newswire · published April 6, 2026 · Tier A

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