CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Dreadnode vs Skyhawk Security

Dreadnode sells an infrastructure platform that gives security teams the means to own, operationalize, and improve agentic cyber capabilities. Skyhawk Security sells an agentless AI purple team platform that uses the same tools adversaries do. CISO Tribune files both under Breach simulation and automated pen-testing. 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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  • Dreadnode
  • Skyhawk Security
Dreadnode vs Skyhawk Security: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
DreadnodeDreadnode sells an infrastructure platform that gives security teams the means to own, operationalize, and improve agentic cyber capabilities.dreadnode.ioSkyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security sells an agentless AI purple team platform that uses the same tools adversaries do.skyhawk.security
What it sells
  • AI Red Teaming[2][3][5]AI red teaming across AI systems in production, from traditional machine learning models to multi-agent systems.
  • Dreadnode Platform[3][4]Infrastructure for security teams to own, operationalize, and improve agentic cyber capabilities.
  • Skyhawk Autonomous Purple Team[5]Ingests findings from a customer's CNAPP, SIEM and vulnerability management tools and runs adversary simulations in an AI-generated replica of the production environment to check whether a finding is actually exploitable.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[3][7]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pagesNot 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
Dreadnode sells to organizations that require scaled agentic workloads and custom capabilities. Dreadnode describes a cyber eval engagement for a frontier model provider. Organizations that need to run inside their own boundary can deploy Dreadnode on a Kubernetes cluster or in air-gapped environments, and on-prem deployment is available with the Enterprise plan.From its own pages, Skyhawk Security sells mainly to security teams and application teams that work with cloud security tools such as CNAPP, SIEM and vulnerability management. Skyhawk Security describes those teams as inundated with critical alerts. Skyhawk Autonomous Purple Team is delivered through a SaaS platform and ingests findings without requiring agents.
Last verified
November 6, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Dreadnode and Skyhawk Security are both filed under Breach simulation and automated pen-testing.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Dreadnode's primary category is AI model and agent security; Skyhawk Security's is Cloud detection and response.
  • Dreadnode is also filed under Penetration testing and red team services.
  • Dreadnode lists AI Red Teaming and Dreadnode Platform. Skyhawk Security lists Skyhawk Autonomous Purple Team.
  • Skyhawk Security is privately held.

What it sells: Dreadnode

What AI Red Teaming does[2][3][5]
Dreadnode applies AI red teaming across the full range of AI systems in production today, from traditional machine learning models to multi-agent systems. Dreadnode Platform evaluations probe models, applications, and deployed agents with adversarial attacks across supported languages and modalities.
What Dreadnode Platform does[3][4]
The Dreadnode Platform equips defenders with ready-to-run capabilities and shared operational knowledge. Dreadnode can be deployed on an existing Kubernetes cluster or an embedded cluster on a dedicated VM, with offline installation bundles for air-gapped deployments.

Questions about Dreadnode and Skyhawk Security

What do Dreadnode and Skyhawk Security sell?
Dreadnode sells AI Red Teaming and Dreadnode Platform. Skyhawk Security sells Skyhawk Autonomous Purple Team.
Are Dreadnode and Skyhawk Security in the same category?
They share Breach simulation and automated pen-testing. Dreadnode's primary category is AI model and agent security and Skyhawk Security's is Cloud detection and response.
Who owns Dreadnode and Skyhawk Security?
Skyhawk Security is privately held.
Who are Dreadnode and Skyhawk Security sold to?
Dreadnode sells to organizations that require scaled agentic workloads and custom capabilities. From its own pages, Skyhawk Security sells mainly to security teams and application teams that work with cloud security tools such as CNAPP, SIEM and vulnerability management.

About Dreadnode

Dreadnode sells an infrastructure platform that gives security teams the means to own, operationalize, and improve agentic cyber capabilities. The Dreadnode Platform equips defenders with ready-to-run capabilities, shared operational knowledge, and the ability to run agents. Dreadnode describes the path to operationalize agents as fragmented and opaque. Dreadnode's capabilities are operator-authored agents for security testing, research, and operations, connected to the tools a team already uses.[3][5]

Ready-to-run cyber capabilities on the Dreadnode Platform put agents to work on security testing, research, and operations. The Dreadnode Platform supports persistent sessions across web and terminal, with search of past work and sharing with a team. Dreadnode Platform workflows coordinate agents by sequencing tasks, running work in parallel, and branching or combining results. The Dreadnode Platform connects existing command-line tools, MCP servers, and custom integrations. Versioned capabilities on the Dreadnode Platform can be shared with their instructions, tools, and dependency setup.[4]

Dreadnode Platform agents carry saved project context into new sessions and retrieve findings from earlier work. Dreadnode Platform users can review structured findings and assets with supporting evidence and relationships. The Dreadnode Platform versions and reuses datasets across evaluations, optimization, and training. Dreadnode Platform users can post-train models with demonstrations or rewards and retain the resulting model artifacts.[4]

Dreadnode combines task evaluations, LLM judges, and AI red teaming so a team can set the criteria for greater responsibility. Dreadnode Platform evaluations benchmark agents against published security tasks and a team's own tasks and environments. Dreadnode uses LLM judges to assess correctness, scope adherence, and signs of cheating against a team's criteria. The Dreadnode Platform probes models, applications, and deployed agents with adversarial attacks across supported languages and modalities. The Dreadnode Platform compares models, prompts, and capability versions with per-sample results and judge reasoning.[3][4]

Dreadnode Platform observability follows active agent sessions with live progress, metrics, and logs. The Dreadnode Platform inspects nested model and tool calls with their arguments and results. Dreadnode Platform traces connect findings back to the execution that produced them. Dreadnode Platform users can query traces to investigate failures and compare latency, token usage, and cost. Runtime policies in the Dreadnode Platform restrict tool access and check proposed actions against scope, and they allow, block, or request approval.[4]

Dreadnode offers AI red teaming across AI systems in production today, from traditional machine learning models to multi-agent systems. Dreadnode offers web application penetration testing with 83 attack technique playbooks. Dreadnode describes an autonomous pentester with a built-in headless browser and 84 skills. Dreadnode agents run network discovery and Active Directory assessments, connected to attack-path analysis and C2 tools. Dreadnode's authored capabilities cover web, AI, network, reverse engineering, and forensics.[2][3][4]

Dreadnode can be deployed on a customer's infrastructure, with application records, execution evidence, and capability artifacts in data stores the customer controls. Dreadnode runs on an existing Kubernetes cluster or on an embedded cluster on a dedicated VM, and offline installation bundles support air-gapped deployments. Dreadnode routes inference to approved providers or to models a customer hosts itself. Dreadnode offers on-prem deployment with the Enterprise plan. Dreadnode states that all evaluation, training, Worlds, and AI red teaming data stays within a customer's organization environment. Dreadnode SaaS meters workloads against a shared organization credit balance. Dreadnode stores secret values without returning them in normal API reads and injects them only into the remote runtimes and evaluations a user selects.[3][4][5][6][7]

Dreadnode treats organizations as an ownership boundary, and workspaces as the main collaboration boundary inside an organization. In SaaS mode, creating or updating workspaces on Dreadnode requires a Pro plan or higher. Dreadnode is SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, and ISO 27701 compliant. Dreadnode charges a one-time annual fee that varies based on deployment requirements, SLAs, and custom work. Dreadnode built an initial suite of ER-Spatial security tasks during a cyber eval engagement for a tier 1 frontier model provider.[3][4][5][8][9][10][11]

Dreadnode on the record

Sources

Dreadnode full record

  1. [1]Dreadnode v2 security agent infrastructure platformDreadnode · dreadnode.io · published March 24, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]dreadnode.ioDreadnode · dreadnode.io · undated page, accessed November 6, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Dreadnode — AI Infrastructure for CybersecurityDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]The Dreadnode PlatformDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Pricing | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Credits | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Secrets | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Organizations | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Workspaces | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Projects | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Beyond the Terminal: Offensive Security Evals for Embodied Reasoning | DreadnodeDreadnode · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

Skyhawk Security full record

  1. [1]skyhawk.securitySkyhawk Security · skyhawk.security · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Radware launches skyhawk securitySkyhawk Security · skyhawk.security · undated page, accessed December 1, 2022 · Tier A
  3. [3]496094 68PitchBook · pitchbook.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier C
  4. [4]About Us - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Homepage - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Skyhawk Security Strengthens Autonomous Red Team with Agentic AI, Enabling Continuous Security Control Validation - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · published December 2, 2025 · Tier A
  7. [7]New Horizons in Cloud Security Part 2: Benchmarking and Novel Self-improving AI Framework for Maliciousness Classification Using Large Language Models - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Platform - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed October 28, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]5 Reasons Why CSPM Tools are not Enough - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Three Reasons why SIEMs are not Enough - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]The Science Behind our Security Part 1: Machine Learning - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Skyhawk Synthesis Security Platform mentioned in the 2023 Gartner® Emerging Tech: Security — Cloud Investigation and Response Automation Offers Transformation Opportunities - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Essential Steps to Improve Your AWS Cloud Security | SkyhawkSkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]The Science Behind our Security - Part 2: The Models - Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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