CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Dreadnode vs Straiker

Dreadnode sells an infrastructure platform that gives security teams the means to own, operationalize, and improve agentic cyber capabilities. Straiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime. 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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  • Dreadnode
  • Straiker
Dreadnode vs Straiker: 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.ioStraikerStraiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime.straiker.ai
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.
  • Discover AI[2][3][4][5][12]Maps every AI agent, MCP server, and agentic workflow in an environment.
  • Ascend AI[2][3][7][12]Ascend AI is Straiker's adversarial testing engine for AI agents.
  • Defend AI[2][3][8][9][12]Defend AI delivers runtime security for AI agents.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Founded
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Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pages
  • August 11, 2026Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.[16]
  • August 4, 2026Straiker launched the Agentic Kill Switch, a control that lets security teams take a misbehaving or compromised AI agent offline.[15]
  • June 29, 2026Straiker announced a $64 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $85 million.[14]
  • June 29, 2026Straiker announced a $64 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $85 million.[13]
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.Not written yet
Last verified
November 6, 2026November 5, 2026

Where they overlap

  • AI model and agent security is the primary category of both Dreadnode and Straiker.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Dreadnode is also filed under Breach simulation and automated pen-testing and Penetration testing and red team services. Straiker is also filed under AI firewalls and guardrails and AI governance.
  • Dreadnode lists AI Red Teaming and Dreadnode Platform. Straiker lists Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI.

How they differ

CISO Tribune files both Dreadnode and Straiker under AI model and agent security as the primary category, but the two sell different things within it. Dreadnode sells AI Red Teaming and the Dreadnode Platform, an infrastructure platform for security teams to own, operationalize, and improve agentic cyber capabilities. Dreadnode also offers web application penetration testing with 83 attack technique playbooks. Straiker sells three products: Discover AI, which maps every AI agent, MCP server, and agentic workflow in an environment; Ascend AI, an adversarial testing engine for AI agents; and Defend AI, which delivers runtime security for AI agents.

The overlap is in adversarial testing of AI systems, which Dreadnode offers as AI red teaming and Straiker offers through Ascend AI. Ascend AI tests for prompt injection, goal hijacking, tool misuse, and inter-agent manipulation, and a successful attack can become a Defend AI policy. Dreadnode instead covers running operator-authored agents for security testing, research, and operations. Dreadnode can be deployed on an existing Kubernetes cluster, with offline installation bundles for air-gapped deployments, and on-prem deployment is available with the Enterprise plan. Straiker offers Detect or Protect modes, with policies that customers write themselves.

Dreadnode describes a cyber eval engagement for a tier 1 frontier model provider. Dreadnode is SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022, and ISO 27701 compliant. On funding, Straiker announced a $64 million Series A on June 29, 2026, bringing its total funding to $85 million. Straiker launched the Agentic Kill Switch on August 4, 2026, and was named an OpenAI Select Partner on August 11, 2026.

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.

What it sells: Straiker

What Discover AI does[2][3][4][5][12]
Discover AI delivers continuous posture monitoring, misconfiguration detection, and governance. Discover AI evaluates agent configurations, permissions, and blast radius to surface misconfigurations and risky integrations before they become incidents. Discover AI covers builder platforms like Bedrock Agentcore, Azure Foundry, and MS Copilot Studio.
What Ascend AI does[2][3][7][12]
Ascend AI tests for prompt injection, goal hijacking, tool misuse, and inter-agent manipulation. Ascend AI integrates into CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, and production deployments to run continuous adversarial testing. A successful Ascend AI attack can become a Defend AI policy.
What Defend AI does[2][3][8][9][12]
Defend AI detects and blocks identity abuse, memory poisoning, data exfiltration, and resource exploitation at runtime. Defend AI secures coding agents such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Claude Code with runtime protection against destructive actions, data exfiltration, and malicious MCP server and Skill connections. Defend AI detects data exfiltration across SaaS applications, blocks prompt injection delivered through enterprise content like emails and documents, and surfaces unapproved agent usage.

Questions about Dreadnode and Straiker

What do Dreadnode and Straiker sell?
Dreadnode sells AI Red Teaming and Dreadnode Platform. Straiker sells Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI.
Are Dreadnode and Straiker in the same category?
Yes. AI model and agent security is the primary category of both on CISO Tribune.
Who are Dreadnode and Straiker sold to?
Dreadnode sells to organizations that require scaled agentic workloads and custom capabilities.
What have Dreadnode and Straiker announced recently?
August 11, 2026: Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.

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

Straiker full record

  1. [1]AboutStraiker · straiker.ai · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Straiker | The Agentic AI Security CompanyStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]AI Agent Security Platform | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Discover AI: AI Agent Inventory, AI-SPM & Agent-SPM | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Security for Coding Copilots and Agents | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Agent Security Testing and Red Teaming | Straiker Ascend AIStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Red Teaming for Agentic Applications and AI Agents | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]AI Agent Runtime Security and Protection | Straiker Defend AIStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Runtime AI Guardrails for Agentic Applications | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]MCP & Agent Skills Security | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]GenAI and Agentic AI Threat Detection | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]AI Agent Compliance & Governance | Visibility, Audit Trails & Runtime ControlsStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Straiker Raises $64M Series A to Secure the Agentic WorkforcePR Newswire · published June 29, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Straiker Raises $64M Series A for AI Agent SecurityStraiker · published June 29, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Straiker Launches First AI Agent Kill Switch for EnterprisesStraiker · published August 4, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Straiker Named OpenAI Select Partner | AI Agent SecurityStraiker · published August 11, 2026 · Tier A

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